


The Open Air

by L_awlietxoxx



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha/Omega, F/M, Like the lightest A/O, Mating Cycles/In Heat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 04:07:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17655794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L_awlietxoxx/pseuds/L_awlietxoxx
Summary: Rey goes to Vermont seeking an escape. She doesn't plan to meet anyone - Certainly not another Alpha, after one caused damage that seems permanent. That is, until Ben makes her think perhaps everything can be rewritten.Ben thought he was content in a small, indeterminate life. That is, until Rey arrives.





	1. Vermont

**Author's Note:**

> My goodness, I started this 8 months ago and I've finally seen it through! Sometimes I thought this day would never come. :')
> 
> The true origin story for this happened right after I saw Adam Driver in person for the first time at the Nantucket Film Festival and got all caught up in my feels. I spent a week in Vermont directly afterwards, and during that week saw these photos: http://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/post/175668991534/driverdaily-driver-knows-that-talking-about   
> Then I had no choice, really, but to start writing rugged-outdoorsy-but-sensitive-Alpha Ben. This is the first A/B/O work I've ever done and it's really light on that element, but nevertheless please be gentle!

He remained silent the first few days. She tried to ignore him, until she couldn’t. 

Rey’s first reaction upon seeing the distant figure of a tall, dark-haired man at the edge of what was supposed to be her distinctly _abandoned_ acre of Vermont solitude: Disbelieving irritation. Leaning over the kitchen sink, she squinted through the window. 

At the edge of the woods, she couldn’t be sure she wasn’t imagining the figure. Then he stopped, before disappearing into the trees. He turned for a moment and looked towards the house. Inexplicably, Rey found herself frozen for an instant where she stood. Then he turned and strode off again, vanishing in the blink of an eye into the forest. But she knew without a doubt – Could feel an innate certainty in the depths of her stronger than her fleeting sight. He had been real. 

The next day, Rey was lying on a blanket under a tree beside the small house, book propped against her stomach and legs crossed, toes in the air. Motion caught her eye, and before her eyes found its source she already knew it was him. He was crossing the edge of the woods again – just past the edge of her property. This time, she could see he had a weathered backpack slung over one shoulder. This time, his glance towards the house was shorter, but still unmistakable. Rey felt it down to her bare toes. 

Then, Rey went on a hike. The intimidating mountain summit had been the first thing she saw when she arrived, towering above the treetops. Four days later, she felt her head was finally clear enough to undertake a challenge greater than just making it through the day. 

The two-hour ascent was invigorating freedom, each deep breath of fresh air a defiant triumph and the dull ache in her legs a comforting reminder of how far her own legs could carry her. Perched on a rock cropping as far to the top as she dared, Rey felt whole and utterly at peace for the first time in months. The sky was a vast, empty dome above her, the ground a distant green tapestry, and it was more than enough to be just a small piece of the whole.

She hummed during the descent. Hopping from rock to rock, she began to wonder if maybe she wouldn’t end up staying in Vermont for three whole weeks, as she’d planned. Maybe she wouldn’t need that long before she could bear going back home and seeing…

A mere quarter mile from the trail’s end, the heel of one of her boots slipped on the sharp edge of a jutting stone. A startled cry ripped from her mouth as her whole body twisted with her ankle and she was sent sprawling. Softly swearing as she sat up, her hand flew to her shoulder where a sharp stone had cut a gash. Then the sharp throb of her ankle rushed up on her and she hissed between her teeth. Her ankle didn’t look visibly injured, but she doubted it could hold weight.

Great. She’d come out with only a water bottle hooked to her belt and a map tucked into her back pocket. No way to call for help. 

With a deep breath, Rey told herself to calm down. She still had several hours of daylight left. Surely, she’d be able to lift herself on her ankle before nightfall… She gave an experimental wiggle of her foot, only to squeeze her eyes shut in pain.

Fifteen minutes passed, and Rey’s mind was beginning to teeter back towards the panic and helplessness she’d come to Vermont in attempt to escape. The face she’d come in attempt to banish began to emerge before her eyes again, and she started chanting to herself _No, no, no,_ in attempt to resist it.

Lost in her desperate muttering, Rey didn’t hear footfalls descending the mountain from another converging path. She heard nothing until his voice:

“Which ankle?”

Rey’s head straightened up instantly, looking up to find him. From the edge of the forest. Denim jeans, hiking boots, a black t shirt, battered backpack. Now, standing only a few feet away, his gaze was almost unbearably potent. Rey felt inexplicable heat prickling at every inch of her, as if static electricity enveloped her. Her mind went blissfully blank and calm. She swallowed slowly. 

Without looking away from him, she rested a hand on her right calf.

“Right.”

It seemed to take him a moment to shift his gaze from her face down to the aforementioned ankle.

“Do you mind if I…” he paused, face minutely strained for a moment as, his full attention on her, the scent of her washed over him. He gave effort to smooth out his expression and finish, “…if I take a look?”

“Might as well. I don’t seem to be going anywhere.”

He seemed to take a moment fortifying himself before he approached where Rey had fallen. He knelt down beside Rey, and she finally saw him fully – The dark eyes rimmed with darker lashes, the freckles and moles dotting his skin like splashes of constellations, the wide lips pursed together in concern, the ears peaking through waves of smooth hair as black as midnight. 

A detached, unaccountable part of her mind wanted to call him beautiful, but the rest of her resisted. She was studiously avoiding men of that type, seeing as they seemed to have a deleterious effect on her health. … And besides, the label seemed too… conventional to truly fit him. Too simple. 

Watching the way he moved so smoothly, how he bent down with careful attention to examine her ankle and gently brush appraising fingers over it… He defied any words Rey could put to him. She watched his features, the serious tilt of his brow as he surveyed her injury.

His hair flipped away from his eyes when his gaze snapped up to find hers.

“It doesn’t seem serious, but you might injure it if you put weight on it too soon.”

Feeling the weight of his sharp gaze on her, Rey didn’t doubt him. But curiously, the pain that had been throbbing in her ankle only a moment ago seemed to be subsiding – Drowned out by the strange heat of his presence crouched beside her. The second she’d seen him, her panic had seemed to float off in the forest air, dispelling away and leaving her feeling as if she’d been thrust into a secret parallel world, where the pain and anxiety from minutes before could no longer touch her.

He straightened slightly from where he’d been crouched low over her, sitting on his heels and quickly surveying the trail. With a bit more space between them, Rey remembered social norms usually included conversation.

“Damn. I made it almost all the way and look what happens. Typical… And it had been such a good hike.”

After looking down the trail for a few seconds, down in the direction that led to Rey’s house, he slowly turned his gaze back towards her.

“You shouldn’t walk on it, for at least a few hours. I realize we don’t know each other and this might seem terribly forward, but…” He paused in his speech for a moment, gaze locked closely with Rey’s. Rey found herself barely breathing, unable to look away nor wanting to. With wild wonder, she thought for an instant that he seemed as stunned by their charged proximity as she was.

“…I’ve seen where you live. It isn’t far, just past the tree line. If you’ll allow me… I can bring you.”

 _Carry. He can carry me,_ Rey thought dazedly. This wasn’t something that normally happened in reality.

None of this was.

“Okay,” she said quickly, voice coming out thin and soft. Then more slowly, quietly, “I’ll allow you.” 

He took a lingering moment to study her face, as if seeking verification of her assent. Finally, he gave a slight nod and reached up to adjust the pack on his back.

“A-are you sure?” Rey rushed to say, “I don’t want to trouble you…”

“It’s no trouble,” he assured, voice deep and smooth. He kneeled down close beside her again, a calm, sure smile relaxing his features. Rey caught the barest flash of teeth behind his smile – a crooked incisor behind velvet lips. “I promise.”

One second his arms were sliding beneath her, and the very next Rey was miles from the ground, held against his warmth and the broad cradle of his chest. She left her breath behind somewhere on the forest floor. 

He had barely taken a few steps when he paused suddenly, feet going momentarily still. His eyes narrowed, as if trying to demystify something at a great distance. His nostrils flared.

He began to murmur in an even deeper, barely-audible voice, “You’re a…”

Rey instinctively stiffened in his hold. Feeling her flinch, he cut himself off. Rey thought she had a good idea what he’d been about to say.

 _Omega._

Trying to do it surreptitiously, Rey quickly scented the air. She could pick up no Alpha scent from him – No scent at all. Usually, only an Alpha would have any kind of reaction to her Omega scent. 

In that brief moment of frozen stillness, Rey stared up at him as he stared forward, seeming suddenly very far from himself. For an instant so brief she might have imagined it, he looked deeply pained. Then the moment was gone, and his features smoothed again. He crooked a slight smile as his gaze slid down to her again – Tensed muscles along his neck the only hint anything may have been amiss. 

“… Out-of-towner. Never seen you around before.”

He started walking again, holding her as casually and easily as could be. Rey was sure that wasn’t what he’d really meant to say, but breathed out in relief all the same as the tense moment passed. At ease again, she carefully curled one arm around the back of his shoulders. Covert beneath the dark t-shirt, they were unexpectedly wide and solid. 

Maybe that had been what he intended to say. Only an Alpha could pick out an Omega on scent alone – Just as only the scent of an Alpha would stand out to her. He couldn’t be. An Alpha could never have this lulling, relaxing effect on her. Every Alpha she’d made the mistake of getting too close to had brought her only vulnerability and heartbreak. 

“Can I ask your name?”

“You are being awfully charitable and bringing me home, I guess you’ve earned the right.”

Her arm curled a little closer around his neck. 

“It’s Rey. I’m from New York City, but needed a break from… everything. My parents used to rent this house here when I was young. I knew I needed to get away for a few weeks, and I remembered how much I used to love it up here.”

“Here is definitely a good break from all things New York City. I used to live there myself, years ago.”

“Yeah? What brought you up here?”

“Falcons.”

He didn’t elaborate right away, as if his answer were already clear. He focused on his footing for a moment, adjusting Rey in his arms as he stepped over the trickle of a shallow stream.

“Falcons?” Rey prompted curiously once they were back on flat trail.

“Oh.” He nodded, smiling briefly to her and then himself. “Peregrine Falcons. This is a conservancy area for them. This mountain has one of the highest concentrations of their nests. I work for The Nature Conservancy to check the condition of the nests every day and keep a count of their numbers. Used to work at the New York City office, but this posting suits me much better.”

“Wait… you do this hike every day? That’s where you’re always coming from when you pass my house?”

“Every day.”

“To count birds?”

He laughed abruptly, flashing another lopsided smile. “If you want to put it that simply, yes. To count birds.”

A beat passed. Rey spent it lost in the sway of his stride. 

He went on, “But I’m sure you do something much more important than bird-counting for a living?”

Rey gave a slight shrug and a sigh. She’d come to Vermont to escape work, but found herself so calm that she didn’t much mind the question.

“I work at a record label, doing new artist promotion. Usually, I love my job. But the awful egos I have to work with sometimes…”

He gave an understanding chuckle that Rey felt rumble out from the depths of his chest. 

“I took this vacation to get away from one in particular.”

Rey hadn’t planned on talking about him. She’d made a pact with herself that she wouldn’t, actually. But her hurt and anger towards him seemed so far away, so much less powerful in contrast to where she found herself now. … In contrast to the steadfast, gentle strength of the arms currently carrying her home. 

“I made the poor choice of getting involved in a relationship with a client and… It didn’t turn out well.”

 _He confirmed every single stereotype about Alphas,_ she thought to herself. _Controlling, possessive, inconsiderate, self-absorbed…_

But Rey’s rescuer didn’t need a rant in return for his troubles.

“Well, you came to the right place,” he said, and Rey found herself immediately relaxing again at the sound of his voice, letting go of the small wave of bitterness that had surfaced in her. “There’s nothing like the trees and clean mountain air to wipe away your troubles – cliché as it may sound. I’ve been living here five years now and I can’t say there’s anything I miss about the city.”

They passed through the tree line together. Rey’s house came into view, just across the clearing. The relief Rey had expected to feel at the sight felt strangely… regretful. 

“I swear that took twice as long when I walked it on my own.”

He smiled again, cheeks dimpling. “I’m up there counting birds every day, remember? Hopefully I’ve worked up some speed by now.”

Rey dug into her pocket for her keys as he approached the door. Blushing slightly, she tried not to squirm around in his arms too much as she fished them out. 

Stopping on her front porch, he bent down slightly with Rey still in his arms so she could fit the key into the lock. Once Rey pushed the door open, he carried her inside. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled as he stepped across her living room carpet. “My boots.”

Rey shrugged. “That’s what vacuums are for.”

He took her to the couch, where he bent and set her down like every precious, breakable thing in the world. 

“Is it feeling any better?” he asked as he straightened again, nodding towards her ankle.

“Much, actually,” she said with a smile. “Think I’ll be able to hobble around the house on my own.” 

Rey spent a moment experimentally wiggling her foot, while he hovered in place. When she looked up towards him, she caught his gaze scrambling away and down to her ankle. 

“Thank you. So much. I… don’t know what to say, really.”

He waved a hand in the air vaguely. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“I do. I’d still be stranded there in the woods if you hadn’t found me.”

Rey watched a smile spread slowly on his face. It was distant, strangely melancholy. He wasn’t looking at her anymore, but down towards the ground. His voice came in a deep, rumbling timbre, as if spoken from beyond himself.

“Well, I did find you. That’s all that matters.”

Still not looking quite at her, he gave an abrupt nod before turning back towards the door. He moved towards it with a rigid hunch of his shoulders. 

Rey watched his back. A subliminal urgency seized her to call him back, but her conscious mind couldn’t find the right words. 

Just at the door, he finally paused. Rey gave a slight sigh of relief.

“I’m Ben.”

In a long moment, stretched out so thin a lifetime could have slipped by, he turned just enough to look back at her.

“I wanted you to know my name, at least.”

Rey laid there for a moment in stunned silence. How had she completely forgotten to ask…? In half an hour, she’d somehow become so immersed in this inexplicable feeling of familiarity… She hadn’t even thought about something as basic as his name. It seemed impossible that she hadn’t always known. 

Rey steadied herself with a long, focused breath.

“Thank you for today, Ben.”

He nodded stiffly, face gone smooth. “You’re welcome, Rey.”

And then the front door closed, and he was gone.

Only minutes later, pain began to rise in Rey’s ankle again. 

 

Rey saw him now and again. Passing by her house in the evening on his way home; Over a booth at the town’s farmer’s market; Coming in to the café as she picked up her coffee.

Sometimes he would ask: “Ankle doing all better?”

And she would nod and smile and say, “Thanks to you.”

Sometimes she would ask: “How many Falcons today?”

And he would smile and say something between, “Eighty” and “One hundred fifteen.”

Each time, Rey scrambled to find something else, something better to say to him. Each time, she failed. His presence seemed to make her body kick into overdrive while her mind sunk into slow and tranquil honey. The combination didn’t bode well for conversation. Each time they parted she cursed her own ineloquence. Each time she thought about him longer and longer; until she found she hardly thought of anything else.

 

Two weeks passed all too quickly. Then Rey was confronted with the true reason why she had gone on her Vermont escape. 

Her damn, _damn_ heat. This would be her first heat since the break-up, and she’d known she wanted to spend it as far away from him as possible.

She could never say any heat spent with him had been pleasant. Sure, he’d done his Alpha duty and been there to ease her distress, but mostly he’d just replaced it with different discomforts. Made her feel helpless, needy, burdensome – Like the days-long period of heat over which she had no control were a drain on his precious time. Like his energy would be better spent elsewhere.

Rey couldn’t believe she’d stayed with him for so long. She would never know how long he’d been screwing other girls before the day she walked in on it. Apparently, one weak and clingy Omega hadn’t been enough for him.

Rey couldn’t help the spiteful memories from surfacing when she felt the first pangs of her heat begin. For the first few hours, her spiky bitterness helped her divert the heat into anger. She stalked back and forth through the house aimlessly. The fury felt cathartic – A welcome, cleansing change from the misery that had hung over her after the break-up. These two weeks she’d spent away from her normal life had banished most of the heartache, and now she felt the gratification of clear-eyed resentment burning away the last of it. 

She would _not_ wish for him during a single minute of her heat. Never again.

The resolution made and her confidence boosted by the flood of hormones, Rey started to grow antsy. Her clothes too hot, her skin too tight. She’d already laid towels all over the bed and dug out the vibrator she’d brought along, but she wanted to put off starting as long as possible. She had days of this ahead of her, and only finite energy.

A cool towel laid over her forehead, Rey sprawled out on the living room sofa. She started flicking through the TV channels restlessly, trying to will her body to relax. 

Frustrated, she threw the towel down on the floor once its coolness dissipated. Then even more restless, she reached for it again a moment later. She froze in place as she turned on the sofa – A sense of deja vu hitting her, so strong it rooted her to the spot.

_“I wanted you to know my name, at least.”_

Rey gasped aloud when the memory seared through her. She looked towards the door, and swore she could see him there so clearly. Looking over his shoulder, his head angled down and lips in a drawn smile. 

“Ben,” she murmured, mindless. Without meaning to, her shorts were undone and a hand thrust into her underwear. Her feet planted themselves against the sofa armrest as she rocked herself down hard against her hand. Pushing a finger up through the wetness beginning to run in earnest now, Rey’s mind flitted in feverish indecision between imagining Ben’s wide hands, his plush mouth, his cock…

All of it. She realized with a start that she wanted all of it. She stroked herself to her first orgasm with only the imagining of his mouth pressed between her legs, his hands pushing her thighs wider apart so his tongue could lap up more and more of her…

She cried out his name on the comedown.

The second time didn’t chase any specific fantasy. Rey laid there with her legs spread, moaning low as she rocked her hips slowly against her fingers, her sight lost to too-vivid images and memories of Ben flooding through her mind in chaotic, plunging pieces. The smile that twisted the corner of his lips. His voice, deep and dark as the night sky. The feel of his arms cradling her close to him – strong and unfailing and gentle all at once.

The memories slid seamlessly into fantasy – Those arms holding her close as he filled and claimed her.

Rey shuddered as a second peak closed over her, the fire inside burning bright and alive now. 

Lying still for a moment catching her breath, even as the flames burned in her core, Rey glimpsed a few minutes of rational thought, bristling with frustrated confusion.

This didn’t make sense. Why were thoughts of Ben affecting her so much? Her ex had been the only Alpha she’d shared her heats with repeatedly, and so her body had become accustomed to him, expectant of him when her heat approached. But she’d never longed and ached for him like this. He had just been the proscribed, routine treatment to beat back the worst of the heat. Sure, the sex had been good – Her heightened sensitivity and insatiable libido during heat saw to that. But now, when she thought of Ben… She’d never felt heat turn sweet like this.

Rey banged her fist against the back of the couch with a noise of frustration. Ben wasn’t even an Alpha! There was no use denying the fact that she’d felt attracted to him from the first moment she saw him – But the physiology of heats had to do with a lot more than just attraction. In heat, her body yearned for the passion, vigor, and stamina only an Alpha could deliver. Sure, she could have sex with anyone, but anyone else would fail to bring her anywhere near satisfaction. Anyone non-Alpha would be exhausted after one go, while Rey would burn for days unsated.

Only Alphas could sense the hormones rushing through an Omega in heat. It was a siren song to them – An urge of instinct to mate, to satiate the Omega and let their own hormones run rampant in tandem. The deep-seeded instincts drawing Alpha and Omega together wavered at the balance between primal and profound, as there existed no deeper intimacy than sharing heat. 

But Rey had smelled nothing from Ben in the woods. Nothing, the whole time he had carried her. Perhaps it was strange that she hadn’t picked up a Beta or Omega scent from him either, but she had no patience to speculate any further. He’d given off no Alpha scent. So thinking of him as her heat rose did no good at all. 

Her hands dug into the sofa cushions in frustration. Why was her body responding so strongly to the idea of someone beyond her reach? Who could offer no true relief to her burning?

Rey jolted on the sofa when a knock pounded at the front door. She sat up with a gasp, taking a moment to breathe deep and gather herself before she was able to stand up, pull her shorts back up, and straighten her clothes. She took steady, focused steps into the kitchen to wash her hands, making sure to breathe deeply. 

Then she went for the door. Who in hell would be bothering her today…?

The door swung open, and there stood Ben. Rey’s mouth fell open, her heart ratcheting up to triple time at just the sight of him. 

Rey could see his chest visibly rising and falling under his dark shirt. A light rain had started, and she could see where it had dappled his hair and shoulders. 

“Rey,” he said, unaccountably out of breath and his eyes dark. 

One word, and Rey felt a shimmer of weightlessness almost tug her into the air. 

“I-I’m sorry,” he ground out in a rush, looking abashed and flustered. “I kept telling myself I wouldn’t come. I wouldn’t bother you. You’d come up here to get away from Alphas…”

“How did you know that…?” Rey whispered, shocked to the core. 

Then, a gust of wet rain blew over the porch against Ben’s back, and Rey breathed in a lungful of his scent.

His rich, sweet Alpha scent. 

Rey stood, frozen in place for an instant. In her whole life, she had never experienced anything so arousing or comforting. Before that moment, she could never have conceived that she could feel such opposing intensities at the same time.

Fixated closely on her with pupils blown wide, he tracked the confusion and attraction chasing each other across her face.

“I masked my scent,” he breathed, just over the sound of the rain falling steadily now. “The moment I held you… I linked with you. I sensed your distaste for the Alpha you’d left; That the last thing you wanted was to meet another. So I suppressed my scent so as not to make you uncomfortable.”

Rey stared for a moment, open-mouthed. It was heard of, on occasion: A rare mind-link between an Alpha and an Omega, through which the other’s emotions could be sensed. Clearly, Ben wasn’t lying. He was right that in the forest that day, she wouldn’t have wanted to know him to be an Alpha.

But now was an entirely different story altogether. 

She’d never linked to anyone before. (Certainly not her ex, or else she might have wised up sooner.) Could it be… some part of her subconscious mind had sensed the connection and that was why she -

The fantasies unspooled in her mind again, and now with Ben standing right there before her, they made a physical tremor roll through her. Rey swore his sharp gaze caught the subtle movement – following it down her body,

Rey’s eyes slipped down along the line of Ben’s neck, where she could see his pulse beating beneath his skin, in the hollow at the base of his throat. 

She suddenly found it hard to breathe. Blood rushed in her ears, and the pounding of her heart filled her whole body. She swore her pulse beat in sync with his. 

“I tried, Rey,” Ben murmured, hands curling into loose fists that trembled slightly at his sides. “I sensed yesterday that your heat was coming, but I knew it wasn’t any of my business. Earlier tonight, I was heading home past your house and… I forced myself to keep going, to not stop…” His voice hitched, betraying how difficult it had been for him to do it.

“But then, in the last few hours… I sensed it getting worse.” His voice seemed hoarse, quavering around the words, “I felt it starting in earnest and then, from miles away… I thought, for an instant, you were calling me…”

Rey sucked in breath in a gasp. She was suddenly aware of torturous heat in her innermost center. She felt drops of sweat along her back, and the trickle of hot moisture between her legs. She knew instinctively – This was another silent, unintended call for him. Rey’s racing mind couldn’t decide between her embarrassment and her arousal – Flitting between a desperate wish that he didn’t sense it, and an even more distraught need for him to hear. 

She saw Ben’s mouth part, his eyes going still darker. The pulse in his throat pounded harder, and she watched the tip of his tongue smooth across his bottom lip. He looked at the edge of either madness or elation – Only a single step away from either precipice.

“Please, Rey. If I’m wrong, tell me. Tell me and I’ll go.”

“Don’t go.”

The words were out before Rey even thought to speak. They were out before she even breathed. If he left, she was sure she would cease to breathe forever. 

Rey reached back blindly for the door, pushing it open all the way. Her eyes never leaving his, her other hand reached for his wrist. She saw his sharp intake of breath when her fingers landed on his skin. Rey stepped back inside, guiding Ben over the threshold after her. Once he stood beside her in the entryway, she pushed the door closed.

The rain faded into a distant hiss. The silence of the house around them filled with the potent heat radiating between them. They were alone, wrapped together in sensuous synergy. 

Rey _felt_ more than heard Ben breathe her name, before his hands floated to her hips. As he stepped close, her hands rose automatically to his biceps. His hands were gentle as air at her waist – tentative as if he were afraid she might vanish right before him. Rey lifted her chin to rest on his shoulder as he curled one arm slowly, carefully around her. She closed her eyes, just feeling his presence. 

Feeling the way he simultaneously stoked and steadied the fire in her soul. The flames were sharper – her desire focused, but the feeling of helpless panic that usually tinged her heat had been muted. A respite of blessed calm smoothed over her. 

She felt Ben’s warm breath at her ear, felt herself breathing together with him. His arm curled around her more closely, as she knew he sensed all the same things she did. 

Their bodies drifted into sync – Pheromones and hormones mirroring and contrasting until Rey felt he must have always been a part of her. Her desire for him was building in a slow, scintillating wave. The moment of shared peace would have been complete if not for the terrible emptiness between her legs. For every shared beat of their hearts, she ached for him at her core still more intensely. And just when she was sure her arousal must have completely soaked through her clothes, she felt Ben give a shuddery breath against her hair and became aware of his own arousal straining at his jeans. 

His desire for her fed into her own in an endless loop – Unexplainable and unarticulated, but their combined force the strongest thing she had ever felt. In the face of it, she felt at once microscopic and all-powerful.

Ben’s lips brushed at her forehead. 

“If we do this… I don’t think I’ll be able to stop until it’s all over,” he admitted in a hush, sounding both timid and awed before their shared hunger. “Until your heat fades. I know you came here because you didn’t want to share your heat with anyone, so just tell me if you don’t…”

“Ben.” Every inch of him went still and silent at the sound of his name from Rey’s lips. 

“I want to share my heat with you. Every minute of it. For as long as it lasts. I didn’t know it, but I… I _was_ calling for you…”

Ben’s breath broke like shards of glass against Rey’s forehead. 

_“Rey…”_

His hands slid slowly upwards – trembling even as they made sparks along Rey’s skin – until his fingertips framed her jaw. He slowly tilted her head higher, and Rey’s lips parted automatically, her thoughts fluttering away like feathers in the wind.

She couldn’t breathe – Not until she tasted the air from his mouth. 

Ben closed his eyes. With every inch of his being given over to his need for her and her body’s irresistible call for him – The way to Rey’s lips was the fall to inevitable gravity.

Rey gasped in a rush, her chest going aflame. Ben’s lips were just as soft and powerful as she’d imagined – Their press gentle but their effect absolute. 

Within the span of moments, they traveled together from gentle wonder, to emboldened questing, to the heights of starved need. 

Thrust over the edge so quickly her head reeled, Rey shoved hands into Ben’s hair, her body curling in to the shape of him as his arms scrambled to reel her close. 

His tongue was maddeningly sweet – The taste of her cure, incurably addictive.

Ben dragged himself away with a painful groan, wrenched from deep in his chest. He released her only to make savage work of his shirt, dragging it off over his head. His eyes were a black tempest when they found Rey again. 

Rey’s hands scrambled greedily across his back when he hauled her close. His skin burned to her touch – Her own heat kindled and matched in his body.

Later, when Rey thought back, she couldn’t remember how the two of them had gotten to the sofa. She didn’t remember walking. Ben probably carried her (again). There had been only the uninterrupted, all-consuming heat and size of him, closed around every inch of her and blotting out all her senses, until he was the only thing she was aware of. 

The only thing that existed. 

Rey pulled the buttons of her shorts messily and desperately, tugging blindly while his mouth claimed her entire attention. Pressing Rey back on the sofa, Ben’s mouth roved over hers, his tongue sweeping hungrily behind her teeth. She’d had no idea kissing alone could shoot electricity through her veins like this. She released a soft moan into his mouth, her mind sputtering to imagine how she would blaze, with him inside her…

His hands joined hers, making faster work of her shorts. Rey sat up slightly to unhook her bra, fumbling for a moment when Ben’s mouth dropped to her neck. After he tossed her shorts away, his hands slid impatiently beneath her shirt, immediately moving to rid her of the offending garment. Within the minute, all of their clothes were scattered in piles around the sofa. 

There was no time for finesse – No space for anything other than inchoate, unrefined need. Kissing Ben, running her hands over his flushed skin, feeling his panting breath against her mouth – Rey was near tears, her body lost in an inferno she’d never felt an equal to before. Her very bones felt in danger of melting away; She was sure she would lose her mind.

“Now, Ben, now,” she sobbed. “It hurts, please.”

Ben managed only, _“Fuck”_ as he kicked his underwear off. He had never been this hard in his life, never felt primal desperation like this. 

Rey’s legs already open for him, he had a brief sight of the glistening wetness running down the inside of her thighs before the primordial Alpha side of his brain took over. He tugged her down closer to him on the sofa with strong hands at her hips, planted his knees, and plunged into her. 

Rey begged his name, begged for everything she could think of, melting open around the force of his onslaught and crying out for more. 

Ben was speechless, panting and grunting as his hips worked fast and deep and relentless with strength he didn’t know he possessed. If he’d been in his right mind, he would think he wasn’t himself. With anyone else, he would have caused pain. But Rey kept shouting it still wasn’t enough, and Ben’s Alpha drive needed to satisfy her – though this rough, bordering brutal pace outstripped all he knew he was capable of. Fucking her fast enough that no air came between them, so hard that he could see the force of every thrust rock through her, both burned together in a conflagration stoking higher and higher. 

Ben came quickly, unaccustomed to this intensity. Rey made a noise of gratification when she felt it, followed by a rush of cool relief that filtered through her own body. Not nearly enough – For either of them. 

Breathing more steadily now but still nowhere near relief, Ben continued pumping his hips into Rey. She groaned low, her head falling back in thickening pleasure as her legs slid higher, ankles locking together across Ben’s back. 

He thrust in and up at a particularly devastating angle, and Rey’s mouth fell open, expression going slack in rapture.

“Nothing ever… Never felt like this,” Rey gasped. “Right there. Ben, _Ben.”_

With some of the edge gone, Ben could think clearly enough to savor how indescribably _exquisite_ she felt, unspeakably tight and sinfully good around every single inch of him. He took his time a bit more, breathing hard and giving in to his wonder each time he sunk deep within her. 

“You feel incredible… Rey. So tight inside, so sweet…”

His hips slipped beyond control again, and he watched reverently as Rey’s expression crumpled in rhapsody. Her second orgasm spasmed through her, and Ben choked as he felt her body tighten, working around him. He bent close, his lips and teeth latching to her jaw as he fucked her through it. He kept thrusting through her mind-numbing tightness until he came again as well. 

He gasped for breath, vision blurry and dark for a moment until he came back to himself. Rey’s lips were moving slowly down the side of his face, her arms draped around him. His cock finally, for the moment, had relaxed. 

Ben turned his head when Rey’s lips traveled near his, finding them immediately. He kissed her slowly and wondrously, savoring her taste and the brush of her tongue, now that he had the presence of mind to do so. She made a sweet, contented sound into his mouth. 

With one more kiss to the corner of her mouth, he murmured, “Are you alright? Is it any better?”

Her fingers smoothed through his hair. She blinked up at him slowly, fondly.

“For the moment, much better.”

She smiled, and for a moment it had just as powerful an effect on Ben as being inside her. 

He leaned close again to taste her smile. One of her hands smoothed across the back of his shoulders, and he thought of the tenderness there hadn’t been time for yet – the gentle worship he thought Rey should know every day. 

Ben kissed his way to Rey’s ear, nipping lightly at the lobe. “Can we move to the bedroom? More space in a proper bed.”

He felt Rey nod, her fingers skimming down his side. 

“One request, though,” Rey stated, voice light.

“Anything,” he whispered against her ear. 

Rey shuddered slightly, heart flipping over once in her chest.

“Carry me there? I quite liked when you did it before, and I’m not sure my legs are reliable at the moment…”

Ben gave a small laugh. “That can be arranged. You tell me where to go, though.”

Ignoring their scattered clothes, Ben maneuvered himself to his feet from the sofa. Rey held out her arms and he gathered her up close. He surprised himself with how easy it was to lift and hold her, even after the exertion he’d just made. He didn’t often tap into his Alpha strength, but was fervently glad for it in that moment. In his arms, Rey was the most wondrous thing he’d ever beheld, and he never wanted to run out of energy for her.

“Up those stairs – watch your head, you’re so tall! End of the hallway, door on the right…”

Rey hoped Ben didn’t notice the way she briefly rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. She hoped he didn’t mind carrying her; That after he’d brought her to two blistering orgasms in a row – One rough and bitterly necessary, the other careful and sweet – she felt as if she couldn’t be close enough to him.

“Thought ahead, I see,” Ben quipped approvingly, when he saw the towels already laid over the bed. 

“Oh.” Rey felt herself going slightly red but forced a shrug. “Even when I’m by myself, it still gets everywhere.”

Ben couldn’t suppress a smirk, lifting a brow slightly as he looked down at her. “Care to show me what you mean exactly?”

Rey bit her lip. “Why don’t you spread me on the bed and find out?”

Ben swallowed a groan at her words. Instead of speaking, he moved to do just as she said. 

When he bent to set her on the bed, she held onto him and pulled him down with her. Lying back, she brought him into an immediate kiss. As they kissed slowly and his wide body settled into place against her, Rey’s mind finally started taking in the magnitude of what was happening. 

Ben was here with her. Sharing her heat. She’d wanted him since the day he carried her home, but thought her heat would only get in the way. Never in her life could she have predicted she would be glad to learn a man was an Alpha. 

… And a spectacular one, at that. (She’d thought such things were just legends.)

Rey had never been the type to do this sort of thing before. Before her ex, she had preferred to suffer her heats alone rather than seek out some Alpha to help her through. She was always most vulnerable during heat, but also most demanding. She wouldn’t want a stranger to see her moments of basest need – The whole sweeping spectrum of highs and lows heat put her through. But, with Ben… She hadn’t hesitated. It had felt indescribably _right_ since the moment he appeared on her porch. Since the moment she’d started thinking about him… 

And the fact that he had come without her having to ask. The fact that he had sensed her distress and her need. He’d come because he suspected it might have been for him, but even so he did not assume his welcome. He’d listened to her, waited for her decision… and only then had he let his Alpha side free. 

Already, Rey felt herself getting slick and wet again. She couldn’t be sure if it was just her heat being overactive in the presence of an Alpha, or if it was a direct response to her thoughts about Ben. She felt both were equally likely.

Leaving her lips thoroughly kissed, Ben worked his way along her jaw. 

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, and the flush that spread along her skin wasn’t only a side effect of her heat. 

Fingers stroking along her side, Ben leaned up to gaze at her for a moment. “I’ve thought that since I met you. For the record. It’s not just the heat.”

Rey’s chest made an odd swooping sensation at his slightly clumsy declaration. She was about to say something similar, but even less graceful – something like she thought he was the most beautiful man she’d ever laid eyes on – but then was thankfully diverted when he shifted attention to her chest. 

Rey stretched out, arching languidly on the bed as Ben’s fingertips stroked one of her nipples and his tongue circled her other. Pressure was building inside her again quickly, leaping up in surges each time Ben sealed his lips around a nipple and sucked. He moved to lap at the other, and Rey never knew her nipples could _throb_ like this. 

Rey couldn’t help shifting beneath him uncomfortably, her thighs rubbing together in a desperate search for some relief from the mounting heat there, rushing from her as Ben’s lips laved across her skin. 

Ben sensed her growing discomfort, and quickened the pace of his kisses down her stomach. Never leaving her skin for an instant, his hands slid down from Rey’s sides, along her hips, then around to her inner thighs. He shifted down on the bed, eager to see as his hands gently pushed Rey’s thighs apart. 

Ben’s breath caught – His arousal seizing him quickly and savagely as a chokehold. Between Rey’s legs, all of her was flushed and dripping. In awed fascination, he drew two fingertips through the wetness that had run down her inner thighs. The scent of all her arousal was stronger and more intoxicating than any drug imaginable. Ben could barely breathe, as if the wetness running from Rey was an elixir for him alone. He felt parched, his mouth starved for the taste of her. 

She made a noise of need above him, and he looked up to her face. 

And he had to ask, in a near-holy whisper, “Is it always like this?”

Rey looked down to his face, looking up at her with inexpressible awe. And behind that – A kind of raw entreaty he probably wasn’t aware he’d exposed. 

Desire mingling with something gentler, Rey moved one hand to his hair, stroking it back from his face once. It was wondrously soft. 

“No, never,” Rey admitted in a hush.

It was true. She couldn’t remember ever being wet like this before. If Ben hadn’t been here – Right here between her legs, attentive and in-tune to every silent signal and need raging within her, it would have made her terrified. But he was here. And with him, he brought an irresistible soothing calm to her fears, and the promise of release and satisfaction. 

When his eyes on her grew deeper, shimmering and alive, Rey added softly, “It’s only for you.” 

At that, Ben tilted his head to lay a kiss to the inside of Rey’s thigh. His heart was suddenly overactive in his chest – and it was that, more than the resurgent ache between his legs – that guided his movements when he tilted Rey’s hips up, lowered his head as if he might be praying, and drank deep of her. 

She made sunspots burst in his head. 

Rey released a moan so loud and deep, it was almost animalistic. Feeling her fingers sink into his hair and hold it tight, Ben slid his arms beneath Rey’s thighs, tilting her legs open all the way so he could press his mouth to her completely. After sucking her clit dry, his tongue hurried to the source of all of her intoxicating Omega scent. Like the blinding center of gravity, he was drawn straight to her core. After drinking down all of the nectar spilling from her, he hungrily licked his way inside her. Rey moaned, rough and urgent, and he felt the tremors surging through her as his tongue worked deep within her. 

His eyes closed, tongue roving and caressing every bit of her depths it could reach, Ben felt a kind of fulfilling relief warring with the most acute form of need. This, beneath his lips, was what had called to him from miles away. When he’d met Rey on the mountain the first time, he’d offered to carry her home because he’d wanted to help her. It had been his choice – One he’d been glad to make. As he left her on her couch that day, he knew he would always choose to help her. He knew if he had something, anything he could offer her, it would be hers. 

Then, he’d felt the pull that enveloped his entire being, straight to the soul. Sure, he’d felt occasional twinges of obligatory commiseration in the past, whenever he sensed an Omega alone in heat nearby, but never the _need_ to act – Never the conviction that he was the only one who could. Ben had fought the pounding under his skin, tried to silence his screaming instincts, until they had consumed him completely. Until his uncertainty of Rey’s welcome of _any_ Alpha was drowned out by the siren song of her inflamed readiness, so splendid and powerful and reaching just for him. He was a slave to it. 

Servitude was never so exquisite, as he sunk his tongue deeper within her and felt how she trembled and whimpered for him. 

Above him, Rey was lost in new sensations – heightened and overwhelming through the potency of her heat. She gasped and trembled beneath Ben’s mouth, stunned at how she could _feel_ everything. Every thrust and swipe and curl of his tongue within her. 

Usually, sex during her heat was of the imprecise, lewd kind; Prizing only the finish as many times and as quickly as possible, with no thought or care for the nuance of each sensation. To begin with, Rey could barely remember her ex ever making the effort to go down on her during one of her heats. Even when he did, Rey remembered it little differently than his rushed, dispassionate rutting from one semi-satisfying finish to the next. 

But _Ben_ – Each press of his tongue within her was an exquisite triumph. Each one was driven and attentive. Whenever he withdrew to suck at her aching clit, she’d hear him moan against her, sharing every bit of the wondrous pleasure and glowing completion that leaked from her core as he tasted every drop. 

Once Rey’s noises grew edged and urgent, Ben shifted up to cover her body with his own and fill her fast and hard with all his frantic wonder of her.

It was nothing like his gentle tongue, and it was everything she needed.

 

Rey straddled Ben’s hips to ride him, and it was as if her body had always known him. After only a few circles of her hips, she tipped her head back and gasped deep when the thick, throbbing head of him embedded into the innermost place that made her tremble from head to toe. She rocked herself up and down him, as his hands smoothed along her thighs, fluttering now and then to cup her hips and tilt her into his thrusts until she cried out. 

Lost as she was in the shuddering sensations, Rey felt a recurrent need to force her eyes open to see him beneath her. Slack with the pleasure of her wet heat, Ben’s expression was open and awed. But the tensed muscles of his chest and abdomen hinted at the primal Alpha strength that lay beneath the surface of him. Rey let out a moan as she sank down at the same moment his hips snapped up hard to meet her, and the force of it rocked her whole body upwards again. A singe of sweet fire lanced through her as he fucked up again hard enough to make her bounce. 

Feeling his hands caressing everywhere they could reach, and the force of him so attentive and steadfast beneath her, Rey found the corner of her mind not addled by pleasure awed by the beauty of his wide, powerful frame spread before her.

The way his dark hair fanned out in a messy halo in her white pillows. The sight of his bare skin gleaming with sweat, the muscles in his biceps and pecs visibly working to process the sensations flooding into him from her body. The trail of freckles and moles scattered like dark stars against the flushed skin of his chest, leading up to the beauty marks dusted across his features. As she worked herself down into his thrusts, Rey watched him tilt his head back, and was seized by an urge to kiss the marks clustered near his right ear. 

A rush of possessive warmth spread through her, and Rey found her movements speeding up with a desperate edge – Not only to reach her own peak, but to see him writhe and gasp her name again. She watched his face for every lovely sign of his pleasure when she felt him pulse within her, and only then did her own orgasm flare up and burn all else in its wake. 

A few minutes later, sinking down into Ben’s embrace felt almost equally as good. She felt his chest heaving against her own, the speed of his heartbeat slowly lowering at the same pace as her own, and marveled at how in sync their bodies had become. 

Rey was just been about to lift her head to find Ben’s jaw with her lips, when she felt him press a kiss to her brow. 

“You looked so gorgeous up there.”

Rey found herself wondering for a moment whether it was strange that he said things like that – Whether it was any stranger than the way his arms were currently cradling her, his fingertips trailing along her shoulder blades. 

As far as they’d said, he was only here to quench her heat. Despite the way they fit together with unconscious perfection like bespoke jigsaw pieces, Rey hardly knew him any other way. 

Then Ben pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek, then found her lips, and all of Rey’s thoughts floated off into mist. The urgings of her heat didn’t include slow, tender kisses that filled her with a gentle serenity staving off the usual blaze. But smoothing her fingers through Ben’s hair as he rolled atop her to taste her lips fully, she found it felt every bit as necessary. 

 

“Will the falcons be alright without you?”

“The falcons?” Ben smiled, and Rey noticed how his cheeks crinkled. “They’ll be fine for a couple days without me. It’s not as if I feed them - I just check they’re all there accounted for and that their nests are safe.”

“How many are there now?” Rey asked with genuine curiosity. It wasn’t the kind of job one often heard about. 

“This season, seventy two.”

“How can you be sure you get an accurate count? How do you tell them apart so you don’t count the same ones multiple times?”

Ben smiled again, more gently this time. His head was resting against Rey’s stomach, his body stretched out beside hers as her fingers carded idly through his hair. Rey had discovered her fixation with his hair when she’d first sunk her hands into it, moments before his tongue had first plunged inside of her. 

He’d been there for almost twelve hours now, but they had yet to emerge from the bedroom. Only within the past hour had Rey finally felt able to relax. It was strange – She’d never felt such urgency in her heat. Ben’s presence seemed to stoke and soothe it simultaneously. One blistering, incredible orgasm would send her body gasping for the next, with no recovery between. Thankfully, Ben had been tireless. The longer they were together, the more intermingled their senses became. Ben seemed to share each desperate spike of her need. He would know where to touch her, would know precisely how to angle his thrusts to hit the spot she wanted – Without her having to say a word. 

“I can tell. It’s hard to explain how, but when you’re trained to identify different breeds of birds, it becomes easier to notice distinctive features that set those of the same breed apart from each other. Not to mention, I’ve been keeping tabs on these particular nests for so long now, I know which birds to expect.”

“Do you name them?” Rey asked, only joking a little as she twirled strands of his hair around her fingers.

“No. I’d get too attached to them if I did. I learned that the hard way, early on.”

Ben shifted his head slightly, looking up towards her. Rey’s fingers stilled in his hair when his dark eyes blinked up at her.

“New artist promotion at a record label? I wouldn’t even know what to ask you about that. It sounds like a job much too hip for me to understand.” 

Rey smiled with a short chuckle. “It’s not as glamorous as it sounds.”

“But you enjoy it?” He asked, one of his hands coming to rest across her bare thigh.

“Enough to stick with it,” Rey responded with a slight shrug. “It was always my dream – To move to New York and work for one of the big labels there. Strictly speaking, I guess I achieved my dream. The problem is…”

Rey trailed off, ruminating over her words. She’d never voiced these private doubts to anyone before – Not her friends, not her parents. Ben waited silently, fingers brushing her skin in gentle encouragement. 

“The problem is I didn’t know how vapid and self-obsessed people in the industry would be – Or most people in New York, for that matter. The problem is, there are some days I think that dream was completely empty.”

Ben shifted to his back, gazing up at the ceiling as his hand slid to the back of her knee. 

“I understand what you mean about people in the city. A lot of that was why I left. You can’t know from the outside how hollow it is, until you’re part of it yourself. And then you spend every day fretting that you’re becoming hollowed out yourself.”

Rey just watched him for a long moment – The slow blink of his eyelashes as he gazed at the ceiling, the rise and fall of his bare chest. He’d put to words exactly the fear she had come to harbor. 

“How long did you live there?” she asked.

“Grew up there,” he said, voice flat. “Tribeca. My parents were big figures in politics.”

“Tribeca?” Rey echoed, mouth falling open slightly. The sleek streets of one of New York’s most expensive and fashionable neighborhoods were probably the last place she would picture Ben, with his scuffed hiking boots and perpetual outfits of denim and t shirts. 

Ben made a ‘mmhm’ sound, nodding slightly. Rey felt his hair brush across her belly button. “Not as glamorous as it sounds,” he said, echoing Rey’s earlier words back to her. “I was disillusioned for as long as I can remember, already sick of the lack of purpose that comes from too much money and parents who are so focused on reliving their young days of glory, I don’t think they ever really cared to know me. I took as many trips out of the city as I could, hiking or camping in upstate. Out in the quiet of nature, the world finally felt full for the first time. More than just a shadow.” All that he’d said seemed to catch up with Ben suddenly, and he faded off with a shrug. He wrapped up his story quickly, “So I got the first job I could that would send me somewhere far away.”

“And you’ve never gone back? Not even to visit?”

“Not even to visit.”

There was clearly a lot more to his story, but Rey considered the little she’d heard. Ben had had a lot as a boy that others might spend their whole lives dreaming of. Rey wondered for a moment if all dreams were like that – Turned to dust the moment they became palpable. 

“Did it ever feel like…” The question had come to Rey quickly, but she found herself biting her lip to keep it in. _Running away?_

With less than a week of her Vermont getaway remaining, Rey had been keenly aware of the same instinct in herself. Everything in her life seemed more bearable for now, but she knew that these peaceful weeks would do nothing to change the life she’d inevitably return to. But then again, Ben wasn’t here on vacation. 

She changed the question: “…what you wanted?”

Ben remained quiet for a long time.

“It doesn’t feel like what I didn’t want. Maybe somewhere along the way, that became the same thing to me.”

 

A while later, they agreed they were both in acute need of a shower. 

“I’ll go after you,” Ben said, watching Rey stretch as she got up from the bed for the first time in half a day. She looked back to grin at him over her shoulder, her eyes glinting.

“No, you won’t.” She reached back to pull him up with her. “You’re coming with me.”

Of course, the idea had been to wash off the sweat and musty remnants of sex. But under the spray of water, Rey watched the water running down Ben’s bare chest and found herself filled with need all over again. 

Ben kissed the back of her neck as he pressed her against one of the walls of the shower, his body pinning her firmly in place with his chest to her back. He nudged her legs apart and lifted her slightly by the waist so he could find all the right places inside her. 

As the bathroom filled with steam, one taste of her peak left her clamoring for more. After Ben came and let her back down to the floor, she turned in his arms to kiss his wet mouth. 

“Again, this way,” Rey panted. One of her hands slid down to curl around his length and coax him to readiness again. 

“Rey,” he choked into her mouth. Her insatiability and the force in her kiss brought him almost instantly back to hardness in her hand, his Alpha blood raging. 

He backed her into the opposite corner of the shower. He took over the kiss, his tongue plundering her mouth as he hooked his hands firmly beneath her thighs and drew her up against him. Rey gripped his waist tightly with her legs. Hands fisted in his hair, she pulled his mouth more tightly against hers. Rey barely felt the tiles of the shower digging into her back, through the raging fulfillment of Ben filling her again. 

Afterwards, Rey briefly went to her knees under the spray. 

“I have to make sure you’re good and clean,” she said coyly, before making sure her tongue did a more thorough job than any soap. The sound of his soft noises beneath the roar of the water made Rey’s breath catch. 

Before she had the chance to reach for it, Ben picked up Rey’s body wash and squirted some into his hands. Foregoing a washcloth, he made sure to lather every inch of her skin. She washed her own hair, but wouldn’t dream of letting him do the same. She definitely took longer than was necessary, thoroughly soaping up his hair before taking her time massaging all of the shampoo out. Ben’s eyes went drowsy and half-closed as she washed his hair, and Rey smiled when she noticed. 

The shower finally off, they were barely dry before Ben lifted Rey up onto the sink and fucked her again, her head falling back against the mirror and thighs bracketing his hips. She smelled like her grapefruit body wash when Ben buried his face against her neck. He moved at a slower, more languid pace with the gathered steam in the room, driving Rey to a drawn-out, deep release that had her clutching him closer and shuddering his name. 

 

Rey woke in the middle of the night with Ben’s face near hers. He had one arm thrown over her, the other buried under the pillow. His face was smoothed in the distant peace of sleep. Rey found the heat within her remain momentarily at bay. Somehow, her body seemed content at just the feel of his warmth so close at hand. Her head rested so close to his on the pillow, she could almost feel the deep, slow brush of his breath upon her lips.

Not wanting to wake him, but finding herself adrift in some gentle longing that moved her past logic or words, she trailed one finger along the smooth swell of his bare bicep and shoulder. His eyelashes fluttered, but he didn’t stir. 

With a feather light touch, Rey traced her fingertip upwards, until she reached the mole just beside his lips. He sighed in his sleep, and Rey quickly withdrew her finger. She was alarmed to find her heart racing, her hand trembling slightly. Ben’s arm drew her slightly closer. Staying utterly still, Rey let herself be pulled in right against him. Feeling his warmth around every inch of her, the way his arm curled around her as if the shape of her had been cut to the shape of him - She didn’t think she’d imagined the whisper of her own name inside Ben’s sigh of sleep.

 

Rey woke in the bed alone, sun streaming through the windows, and immediately panicked. She was sweating with the blaze within her, but the tightness that suddenly constricted her chest seemed unconnected to the burning. If anything, it was even more alarming.

Then she heard the distant clattering of dishes from the kitchen downstairs. Rey slumped back into the pillows with a hand over her heart, sighing in relief. Deciding to put off a closer inventory of her relief, Rey scrambled from bed. She pulled on clean underwear and the first t-shirt she found in her dresser before immediately heading down the stairs. 

She felt anxious and off-kilter, without Ben in the room with her. Her first instinct was to chalk it up to her heat, but the strange way her heart seemed to squirm like a live, demanding thing in her chest felt wholly unfamiliar. 

“Hi,” was all Rey could say, brought up short by the sight of Ben’s lumbering frame standing at her sink, wearing only boxer briefs with his hair all disheveled. A pan was sizzling softly on the stove, and when he turned she saw he was washing the dishes she had left piled there the day before. 

“Morning,” he said, smiling crookedly. “Sorry, I meant to be back upstairs when you woke up.”

“It’s okay,” Rey said with what she hoped approximated a flippant shrug – As if she hadn’t fallen into a panic when she’d woken up in bed without him. “You don’t have to…” she started to say, nodding at the dishes.

“I don’t mind.”

It wasn’t awkward, precisely – More unsure. Both of them felt drawn by the lingering edges of intimacy, but unsure how to behave in the light of morning, after they’d shared more orgasms throughout the night than could be counted on fingers; When this was the first time Ben had ever stayed over, but he nonetheless hadn’t thought twice about coming down to Rey’s kitchen in just his underwear. 

Rey looked him over again, taking in the size of him filling her small kitchen, and stopped over-thinking. She came over, looped her arms around his neck, and lifted herself onto her toes to kiss him. 

He made a grateful sound of content against her mouth, and Rey smiled into the kiss as she felt his aborted movement to put his arms around her, when he remembered his hands were dripping with dish soap. 

“Morning,” she returned when she pulled back and lowered herself back down to the floor. 

“How are you feeling?” he asked. This close, Rey could see the concern in his eyes warring with something more unsure and sensitive. 

“Fine for now, actually.” 

When that made him smile slightly, Rey thought she interpreted his eyes a bit better. She pulled him down for another brief kiss. 

“That was just because I wanted to,” she said afterwards, shrugging it off as she felt herself blushing slightly. Turning away to hide her bewilderment over her own embarrassment, Rey didn’t see the way Ben’s gaze followed her as she went to sit at the kitchen island – The fondness in his eyes or the touched quaver of his smile. He turned quickly before she would see. 

“I hope everything in your fridge was fair game,” he said as he opened cabinets until he found plates and silverware. He retrieved the pan and a spatula, and served Rey the larger portion of an omelet. 

“This was all in my fridge?” Rey asked, gaping at the cheese and vegetables leaking out onto her plate.

“The peppers were a bit old but they won’t hurt you.” In testament, Ben ate a large bite from his own plate. 

Not until the first bite passed her lips did Rey realize how ravenous she was. 

“Should I make more?” Ben asked, doing a terrible job of hiding his laugh behind his hand as Rey shoveled breakfast in her mouth. 

Rey just leveled him with a glare, too busy chewing to answer. Still laughing to himself, Ben finished his own food with a grin. 

Looking down to her own plate as Ben started bustling around the kitchen again, Rey realized she hadn’t eaten since the day before. The only thing she’d been hungry for was Ben.

The thought pulled her up short. It wasn’t unusual for her to forget about eating or showering during heats. What was unusual was for her need to focus not on simply the slaking of her burning, but on the person...

To find joy in the desire for her Alpha.

Rey choked as she attempted to swallow the food in her mouth, making Ben turn towards her in concern.

 _Her_ Alpha? 

But then, the way he set a glass of water beside her and let his hand linger on her arm for a moment did absolutely nothing to detract from the mistaken thought. 

Sitting there at the kitchen island, Rey watched the muscles across Ben’s broad, bare back as he stood at the sink washing the final dishes. Sucking her bottom lip into her mouth, then chewing it hard, Rey tried to contain herself. She dug her nails into her palm, as the mounting heat within her recalled the feel of him strong and ardent above her, taking her and filling her until she felt him _everywhere._

“Ben.”

She spoke the moment he set the final plate down in the drying rack. His head lifted slowly, then immediately turned at the plaintive, rough edge her voice had given his name. When his eyes met hers, Rey’s heat flooded into him so quickly and swiftly, his throat grappled to find air. 

He came over to her with movements no less rushed than her scramble from her seat. When Rey reached for him, instead of taking her in his arms he spun her to face the island and crowded her up tight against it. Just the press of him all along her back made Rey’s entire body quake. He sucked at a spot behind her ear as his hands peeled her underwear away. 

“Ben…” she panted his name repeatedly, reaching back for him blindly as the hours that had passed without him inside her suddenly caught up in a dizzying, terrible rush of aching emptiness. 

As his own body absorbed her need for him, Ben choked on the air in his throat. Moving in a frenzy to free himself from his briefs, he couldn’t help the way his heart raced unchecked, in complement to the breathless might of his Alpha sex drive. There was something new to the scents and chemical signals from Rey this morning – Something more personal and focused than simply the Omega compulsion. 

Rey didn’t want an Alpha to sate her. She wanted _Ben._ The day before, he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t imagined her call for him, but now there was no mistaking it. His name was embedded in every bit of her body’s desperate yearnings. 

“Rey,” he whispered in a strained voice near her ear.

“I need you, Ben,” she all but begged, pressing herself back against him more desperately. 

Ben choked back a moan, before he _finally_ got his own underwear out of the way. 

Then his Alpha side took over completely – Not only a wired instinct to satisfy Rey’s boundless need, but a fierce possessiveness every bit as targeted as her fraught, silent calls for him. 

He bent her flat against the island, one hand pressed at her back and the other gripping her hip tight in place as he fucked into her, fierce and determined. Rey cried out in satisfaction, her hands scrabbling at the countertop for purchase as Ben immediately launched into a rough, powerful pace that rocked Rey’s entire body between himself and the counter, giving no quarter. Rey wanted none. Each slam of him into her still barely felt like enough. 

After, as Ben panted and the Alpha ferocity receded, he grew keenly aware that he’d just fucked Rey senseless over her own kitchen counter. He could see the beginnings of a bruise on her hip, where his hand had gripped her. He let go of her, stepping away to find a cloth. He wet it and used it to clean first her, then himself. He fetched a second one to clean the countertop. 

“Ben,” Rey toned, pleasant and languid, still lolling against the counter. She smiled when he looked at her, and she caught his sheepish expression. “Stop cleaning, will you?” 

She crooked her finger towards him, beckoning him back. It took but a moment for Ben to forget his bit of embarrassment. He tossed the cloth into the sink and came to close her in his arms. He bent down until he could hide his face in her hair. She hummed contently, her hands caressing his sides.

He kissed her ear before murmuring there, “Let me take you back to bed and go gently this time?”

Her smile growing, Rey reached to twine her arms around his neck. “Let you? I insist on it.”

Ben needed no directions this time when he scooped her up from the floor and carried her to the bedroom. He was bold in immediately spreading her on the bed for his hands and mouth. But when he slid his way inside of her, he turned delicate and solicitous. 

With Rey’s flames low, she didn’t urge him to greater speed or force. She delighted in the warm tremors that rolled through her each time she felt every inch of him entering her slowly and precisely – At the way he rolled his hips with each slow thrust to make sparks dance within her. Breathing hard through every deep, delectable sensation, Rey pressed herself closer in his arms. He murmured her name in a hush against her mouth as he sank as deep within her as he possibly could, and Rey felt lit from within. 

 

By the afternoon, their pace was rough and frantic again. Rey had fallen asleep for a few hours, and when she woke she’d been ravenous for him. Ben had spread her legs as wide as they would go and pulled her flush against his own hips, taking a few minutes to build up to a rhythm hard and fast enough for her. Scrabbling at the sheets as her back arched, Rey cried for more and _more_. Panting as his Alpha strength flared to rise to her command, the headboard banged against the wall as Ben fucked her straight through two orgasms, until Rey finally yelled out and her body began to unspool. Ben panted above her from the exertion, sweat matting his hair. 

Rey’s desperation slowly evaporated as she sank back down into the bed. She gasped for air as Ben slowly withdrew, still trying to catch his own breath. He could sense the blaze within her was quenched for the moment, but something else was amiss. It almost felt as if something had been dislodged within her... Something that caused her another type of distress. 

Ben looked up, and saw with a start that Rey had covered her face with her hands, and her shoulders were shaking.

“Rey…” he whispered immediately, hands already reaching for her but then freezing in mid-air, unsure. “I-I’m sorry, was I too rough or…”

Rey immediately shook her head behind her hands. “It wasn’t you.”

Her words had been clear – but so was the wet tremor in her voice that caused Ben acute devastation. 

He lowered himself down at her side. After helplessly watching her shake behind her hands for a terrible moment, he tentatively laid a hand over her shoulder.

After a few moments of savoring the gentle touch, Rey rolled into his chest, hiding her face there instead. Ben inhaled sharply. His arms came around her so carefully, he might have been touching her for the very first time. 

“It wasn’t you,” Rey whispered again, clinging to him now. She tried to focus on the feel of Ben, present against her and solid beneath her grip. She tried to concentrate on only his gentle hands smoothing across her back. 

When the memory of another face resurfaced like a lash across her skin, Rey flinched and pressed closer to Ben. 

“It wasn’t you. It wasn’t you…”

Making a hushing noise in her hair, Ben stroked up and down her back until she fell into slumber again. 

Rey’s words had become increasingly pained the more she repeated them, increasingly determined to either convince or rid herself of something. Holding her carefully as she slept, Ben could only hope he never met the person Rey had repeatedly reminded herself he wasn’t. He could only hope he never gave her a reason to doubt the distinction.

When moonlight began reaching through the curtains, Rey and Ben laid spooned together in the space between waking and sleeping – Between the physical press of skin from Rey’s back to Ben’s chest, and their more intangible entanglements

“Will you tell me about him, Rey?” Ben asked in an entreating whisper. “I sense you thinking about him sometimes, and I wish I could stop it. I feel how it causes you pain.”

Rey thought back to when Ben had appeared in the rain on her doorstep – When he explained that a mind-link was how he’d known to mask his Alpha scent when they first met. It was how he’d always seemed to know exactly what she needed; how each of her desires had become his own, as had her pleasures. 

He couldn’t read her thoughts precisely, but he could feel the heavy barbs of memories still pulling at her. 

Rather than feeling her interiority threatened or violated – as Rey always thought she would when she imagined a mind-link – Rey found herself comforted and grateful. Ben had known exactly when and how to ask. For her part, Rey could sense that he asked the question without a hint of self-interest. He asked not with wariness of a rival, but to understand and assuage the effect the memories had on her. 

Sighing softly, Rey turned in his arms to face him. She couldn’t quite look at his face, but she closed her eyes in gentle appreciation when Ben’s fingertips stroked her cheek. She curled her fingers lightly around his wrist. 

“We dated for over a year. He wasn’t the first Alpha I’d ever been with, but the first I had a relationship with. He didn’t have much patience for my weaker moments – or my stronger ones, for that matter. He shared all my heats with me, but he seemed to find it a burdensome obligation.”

Ben blew a disbelieving breath into Rey’s hair. He pulled her slightly closer, one broad hand sliding slowly up Rey’s lower back. Ben bit his lip hard to hold in words of blistering hatred for a man he’d never met; A man who was so blind to the sun he took the light of day for granted.

Rey hummed softly as she let Ben draw her closer, and she pillowed her head on his shoulder. The unfailing calm that Ben’s presence exuded rendered the memories distant and harmless. 

Only days ago, Rey couldn’t have imagined feeling so untouchable. But then again, she couldn’t have imagined most of the things that had happened since she’d opened her door and pulled Ben inside. 

She talked easily, more lightly than she could ever remember about the subject that had weighed on her for so long, “I can get… unwieldy during heat, as you know.”

Rey hid her face against Ben’s neck with a slight flush of embarrassment, while Ben slid his hand all the way up to the back of her neck and rested it there lightly as he chuckled. 

“Demanding, perhaps. I know.”

“Well, sometimes he couldn’t quite satisfy me and… he didn’t like that.” 

Memories rose in front of her eyes, crested, then sunk out of sight again. Rey trailed a finger along Ben’s shoulder and down his arm, the patterns of moles dotting his skin so much more real. 

“I think… I cried before because I remembered instinctively what it used to be like. I would beg and beg him when it wasn’t enough. And when he had nothing more to give, he would shame me. Call me names when he came, then leave me to sweat it out alone until his pride recovered enough to let him come back.”

Ben breathed with concerted effort. In, then out, then in again. Rey was in his arms. Rey, who deserved every protection and tenderness. There was no place for fury right now. 

“What made you finally leave him?”

“Well, walking in on him with some other woman in his bed sure did it.”

When he heard the words, Ben learned in a rush the full might of his Alpha blood. One of his hands clenched, pressing into Rey’s upper back; While the rest of him boiled in barely-contained wrath. 

If that bastard had been within his reach right now, Ben was sure he would have beaten him within an inch of his life, if not straight beyond it. 

But the scum wasn’t here. _Rey is here,_ Ben reminded himself firmly. 

“Listen to me, Rey,” Ben whispered, his voice betraying a slight tremor with the import of what he needed to express. His arms closed around her fully now, crushing her close against himself. “He didn’t deserve a hair on your head. He didn’t deserve a moment of your attention. These days – this heat with you…” Ben abruptly stumbled over expression, casting for words that each seemed flimsy and pathetic, before all that was racing through him. “Let’s just say, I won’t ever forget it. And you’re not demanding, or unwieldy. You’re just… unspeakably fierce and bright. Sometimes, I was sure you would burn me alive, and it was the best thing I’ve ever felt.”

“Ben…,” Rey breathed, hiccupping slightly over his name. 

“Please, Rey. Promise me. Promise me you’ll never give him another chance.”

Rey pulled back from where she’d buried her face against his shoulder, just enough to see up into his eyes. To see how they sparkled fiercely in resolve, before a backdrop of veneration.

 _How could I?_ Rey thought immediately, as quickly as a blink or a sigh. _After you?_

“Never,” Rey whispered, softly but truly. “I promise, Ben.”

“Good.” 

One of his hands cupped the side of Rey’s face, and Ben couldn’t remember putting it there. He just watched in reverent absorption as his thumb traced the corner of her mouth. 

“Good.”

He whispered the word again, then replaced his thumb with his lips. 

 

Savoring each exquisite, catastrophic sensation, Rey realized she’d never felt more alive. In the middle of the night, she and Ben exchanging sighs and moans between their lips; Her heart set racing not with force, but with all the splendor of oceans set ablaze in sunsets and bursts of lightning filling hot summer air. 

Spread in Ben’s lap with her legs curled around his hips and her arms clutching him as if she could pull all of him within herself, Rey willingly gave her whole world over to his possession. Eyes closed, she trusted herself utterly to his hands guiding her at the waist, and the movements of his hips beneath her. With a rush of heat that sent Ben kissing the blush spreading up her neck, Rey felt _powerful_ for the first time. Something in the way Ben moved inside her – Not to conquer, but to glorify. 

It seemed impossible that the heat pulsing within her had ever been a sentence of torturous dissatisfaction. Her Omega needs had been transformed into rapture that challenged reality. Now, with Ben working his way into her core and the solid stretch of him opening her wide and making her feel larger than life, Rey exalted in the fire licking all the way to her fingertips. The flames danced in welcome for him, paving his way to secret, holy corners of her no one else had ever known. Each time he slid deeper into her, her blood sang in her veins. 

The universe laid at her fingertips. She wanted for nothing.

Except perhaps for time to stop – So Ben would live within her always, and every soft noise she ever made would be gathered by his lips like treasures.

 

“Where are you going?” Rey asked, her voice searching and unguarded with the remnants of sleep.

Ben stilled his efforts to get out of bed without waking her. He looked back and smiled his own sleepy smile of reassurance. She extended a hand as if to pull him back, and he clasped her hand between both of his own.

“Just downstairs. To steal more of your food. Got to stay well-energized for you.”

As if he were embarking on a journey much longer than across the hall and down the stairs, he leaned close to press a kiss to her forehead. 

“I’ll be right back. Promise.”

Rey blinked slowly before releasing his hands. 

“Good.”

 

The next time Rey woke, she kissed Ben awake until her arousal spread to him. He pulled her closer, and in the slow, sleepy rocking and joining of their bodies, Rey found herself thinking it felt nothing like sating a heat. 

Ben’s lips kissing her neck, his hands gentle but firm at her hips to keep her against him, and deep inside her the head of his cock pressing to each and every spot of sweet overflow. 

It felt like tenderness. It felt like creation. It felt like… 

No, Rey wouldn’t dare let herself think it. 

 

Holding her afterwards, Ben’s gaze travelled past everything to the window. He knew the glow of morning would come soon. He couldn’t help thinking the minutes were numbered and precious. With a rise of panic constricting his chest, a helplessness momentarily overwhelmed him – Completely at odds with all the Alpha vitality that coursed through him, sending his blood zinging at the same frequency as Rey’s. He despaired that it would never fade. That morning would come, his Alpha side would retreat, and yet his own burning would go on and on and on.

That after Rey’s heat abated and the synergy of their bodies fell silent, the rest of him would be left searching for the herculean strength to disentangle himself from her.

He looked out the window, unable to decide if the coming morning was a sentence or a reprieve.

 

“I didn’t know it could be like this,” Rey admitted in a whisper, as Ben slept beside her. 

She knew she should save this for when he was awake. He had been so good with her, he deserved to hear. But Rey wasn’t ready – Just voicing it aloud was formidable enough. 

“I always thought I hated my heats, but that’s not true. I just hated them with anyone but you.”

 

The first glow of dawn sunlight drew them back together from sleep. They both felt the flames within Rey had calmed, and yet Rey could not imagine moving her head from the crook of Ben’s shoulder. He couldn’t fathom how to release her from his arms.

When Ben slowly reached down to touch her, he moved with every bit of reverent desire but without instinct behind his fingers. Rey let out a breath that sounded like his name. She opened her legs wider, and Ben’s fingers found her still wet for him. He tried to stop himself overthinking and wondering – to keep the struggle of hope and persistent doubt within him from paralyzing him. He simply followed Rey’s grasping hands at his biceps – followed them until he found himself between her legs again.

Embracing Ben close as his hands held her thighs hooked up at his hips, he gently opened up and inflamed those deepest spots of dizzying, searing fulfillment Rey had come to think of as his. Few lovers had ever discovered them before. None ever made the effort to learn and master just the right angles to work those spots to exquisite, shuddering overflow. Rey moved with him, and it didn’t matter whether or not there was Alpha strength behind his thrusts, when he knew just the angle to fill her being with his own. She was the perfect fit for him. 

There were no raging Omega hormones to distract Rey from each ripple of muscle in Ben’s back beneath her hands. There was no heat devouring her from inside, distracting her from each quietly devastating snap and twist of his hips. It was as if they were fully alone for the first time, in a world where nothing really existed aside from the place where they were joined and moved together as one. 

His lips were warm and soft at her ear, his fingers pressing indents into her upper thighs, and Rey careened between each new, heartbreakingly perfect detail. _Perfect_ was a crude approximation for the warm completion surging and swelling within Rey, and yet it was the only word she could manage. Without the flames inside blurring her senses, Rey wallowed in how right it felt, to hold Ben’s essence within her. 

He shuddered against her as he slid into her slowly, one last time, pushing until there was nowhere left to go. The overflow within Rey bubbled up to her lips in the shape of his name. 

In the split second before her release rushed over her, Rey wanted to cry. Because it felt like so many countless beginnings – Not an ending of any sort. 

 

Rey fell back to sleep shortly after they finished, her head turned towards Ben and arms tucked in against her chest. Watching her in the rising morning sunlight, Ben pulled the blankets up to her shoulders and carefully tucked them around her – Himself on top rather than sealed in with her. 

Still, he could not resist letting his head sink into the pillow beside her one last time. He couldn’t keep himself from watching her for just one minute more – To spend just one more moment convincing himself he was doing the right thing.

On the day he met her with her twisted ankle in the woods, the mind-link had snapped open the first moment he touched her. As they shared her heat, he had felt the other side of the link widening on Rey’s side – Felt her gradual awareness of it and the lowering of her inner defenses. Eventually, the link had grown enough that Ben felt her sharing and drawing from it equally. 

Ben closed his eyes and shifted closer to her, until his head rested mere inches from hers. He doubted he’d be able to see her dreams, but he searched for some reassurance of his decision. 

Ben could see only that Rey’s sleep housed no one. She dreamt, but only in indistinct shapes and shifting colors. She called on no forms or faces in her sleep. She slept deeply; Her mind hummed gently with peace. 

Despite himself, Ben smiled to sense it. He thought back to the black depths of self-doubt, the insecurities and anxieties he had first felt in her – grown in the shadow of an imposing figure from which her memories sought to flee. 

The shadow was banished, and Rey had overcome the heat, vulnerability, and isolation she’d feared. Her dreams thrived in sunlight and grew unfettered, in whatever direction she liked. 

She alone should choose their aim. Ben knew Rey had come to Vermont for consolation and liberation. He was glad he had been the one to help, in whatever small way he could. But she would leave soon to return to her normal life, and this bright, open expanse of possibility and capability was the only thing she should take with her. 

Ben reached out to touch her hair, then thought better of it. He stopped himself at the last moment. He might wake her; and some meager instinct of self-preservation reared its head. It came laughably, pathetically late. Getting out of this bed would already be one of the hardest things he would ever do. 

“Sleep well, Rey.”

Downstairs, the front door closed carefully. Even in sleep, Rey heard the soft sound slink its way up the stairs. Even without fully understanding why, Rey’s sleeping features tightened in loss. 

“Ben,” she murmured in sleep. Turning, one of her hands reached automatically for where he should be. Reaching, reaching, and reaching.

 

Outside, the world was changed. Ben had lived in this same town for five years, and yet none of it seemed familiar. He’d thought he was happy here. This morning, he could find none of the usual beauty in the slant of morning sunlight against the treetops, or in the birdsong calling the world to wake.

He couldn’t face the thought of going home to his small house, empty and quiet. Instead, he made straight for the mountain trail and reached the summit in record time. He took the ascent with wide, hurried strides, channeling all his energy into the physical exertion so there would be none left for his mind.

Ben took his normal look out position – A spot where he could see the incline of steep rock jutting out just below, where the Falcons made their homes. He watched them numbly, not thinking to begin the count, unable to remember the most recent tally or which of the birds had the injured wing. 

Without any of his normal gear, he was shivering in minutes due to the altitude. And yet, he did not make for the descent. He sat there looking out from the summit for hours, until half the day went by.

Until the wind might make him numb enough to stop feeling anything at all. 


	2. New York

After the passing of her heat, Rey’s body radiated with energy and vitality. Physically, she couldn’t remember a heat ever leaving her so strong and satisfied. Emotionally, she couldn’t remember one ever leaving her so bereft. 

Even while Rey’s body told her Ben had given her more than enough of himself for its fulfillment, everything within her writhed in agony against his absence. 

Rey couldn’t justify it. She and Ben had spent a much higher proportion of the last few days fucking than conversing; and yet it was his voice and his warmth that she missed. The way his lips always came back to kiss that same spot beneath her ear… 

The way his crooked teeth showed when he smiled, and how his hair curled around his ears, and the thrumming intensity in his eyes every time he looked at her.

Rey kept a lookout at the kitchen window each morning and evening, when Ben usually passed by on his way up and back down the mountain. She saw no sign of him. Around town, there was no trace of him. 

Distracted, midway through packing her bags, Rey sat down in the middle of all her scattered belongings and closed her eyes. Feeling foolish but thinking it must be worth a try since no part of her seemed willing to let him go, Rey tried to sense her way to the other side of the mind-link. 

It was hazy and indistinct, but unmistakably still connected. And yes, _finallythankyou finally_ she could feel him at the other end. He wasn’t far from her at all, certainly still right here in town. She could go to him and…

Rey stopped mid-thought. She opened her eyes and the connection faded off. He was still right here in town, meaning it must be his intention that she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him since her heat. Sure, he might not have known she was leaving the next day, but three days without ever seeing him on the mountain trail? That was long enough to rule out coincidence. 

Rey lurched to her feet with a decisive sound. She had been here long enough. It was time to pack up, to go home, and leave any trace of inadequacy or dependency here. She was taking only what she could carry, and it would more than suffice.

 

Ben felt when Rey left town. It made him short of breath – The raw scrape behind his heart urging him to chase after her. Ben grit his teeth and endured; trying to tell himself he wouldn’t trade the distance he thought she needed, for Rey in his arms for just another moment. 

Ben had to admit there was something selfish to it as well – Perhaps some degree of cowardice. 

_I don’t know if I could love you without it consuming me, and I’m frightened by the thought._

The next day, he couldn’t bring himself to resume his normal route up the mountain. He had to continue taking the alternate trail on the mountain’s other side, as he had since the end of Rey’s heat. He couldn’t bear to see her house – To see the place where she had opened herself to him and showed him a world he would never forget; one too full of light and divinity to possibly house him.

Rey’s first week back at work went fine. Great, even. Everyone proclaimed how much she’d been missed, and she was grateful to be busy again, immediately diving into all the work that had piled up in her absence. 

Her friends tried their best to be subtle in their lingering concerns, but couldn’t help a certain amount of hovering. 

“No, I didn’t talk to him while I was gone, and not since I got back either,” Rey said with a sigh, rolling her eyes over her lunch. “He texted me a few times, but I ignored them. It’s kind of pathetical, really.”

Rey’s friends stared, awestruck. Rey had been practically inconsolable before she left for Vermont, devastated by the discovery of her ex’s cheating. They had watched Rey sink deeper and deeper into the unhealthy pit of her relationship with an Alpha all wrong for her, but had been powerless to retrieve Rey from the dependency that had claimed her. They had never liked him – A predatory Alpha who seemed to see in Rey only an Omega to dominate, rather than a lively woman to love. And little by little, Rey had shrunk to his expectations. 

Many times they had done their best to urge Rey to see that the physical compatibility and instincts between an Alpha and Omega didn’t always mean they were good for each other as _people._ The two were entirely different things, really. 

Apparently, a few weeks in Vermont were all it took for Rey to get it. Her friends marveled at the change in her as they ate and talked and laughed together over lunch, just like old times. Like the clock had rewound itself, and the Rey sitting there shining before them was the same one they’d known before the worthless ex trampled his way into her life. As if he’d simply been erased from her existence. Her smile was perfectly unburdened. 

 

Rey dreamed of Ben sometimes. Often. She thought of him when she went running in Central Park and saw birds she had no hope of naming perched in branches. Thought of him whenever she had an omelet. Or any eggs, really. When she washed dishes. When she wore the underwear he had taken off her. 

Each time, it made her smile. Then, she realized she spent most of her days smiling.

She asked herself sometimes why it didn’t bother her more that he hadn’t said goodbye. She’d felt hurt the day she left, but that small pain had become subsumed in the memory of those incredible, blissful days and nights shared with him. Nothing compared to it; Nothing could take away from it. 

The moments when she missed him came only late at night, when Rey laid in bed and so easily imagined him there beside her. His gentle hands at her waist, or huge arms wrapped around her. His nose against the nape of her neck, or his breath tickling her forehead. The rhythm of his slow breathing as he slept. 

Rey rolled over, and swore she could hear his voice so clearly – Whispering her name from a great distance. 

Before she could think better of it, Rey closed her eyes and wrapped herself in her memories of him. The clear, articulated thoughts formed in her mind with power and feeling she could not deny.

_Ben. Come back to me, Ben._

_I don’t need you – I don’t think I’ll need anyone ever again. But I yearn for you so. Every day. I think of you always, and it fills me with beauty._

_If I weren’t what I am and you weren’t what you are, I would still feel the same._

_In Vermont, my body called for you. Now, it is the rest of me._

_Come be with me. Ben._

 

At first, Ben couldn’t be sure he didn’t dream her voice. She filled his dreams constantly with her smile and her sighs and the feel of her hair between his fingers.

 _This is a dream,_ he thought. And yet – For a moment he was certain she had been there, just beside him and clear as day. She had held out her hand and when he took it, her skin felt so warm and real. _This is a dream I never want to wake up from._

This felt different, he was sure. Her voice echoed in his bedroom even after he woke. As if she were right there beside him, and his bed a little less empty.

 _Come be with me. Ben._

“Rey…” 

Her tone and the steady, bright warmth he felt through the bond were like a balm to his heart. There was none of the doubt or anguish that had veiled her before. Now, she shone with such certainty and welcome – His own north star on the clearest night of the year. 

He threw back the blankets, ready to follow her starlight.

 

Driving through the night in his battered pick-up, Ben had plenty of time to consider the question of happiness. 

Rey had asked him once if he’d found what he wanted, in Vermont. All he’d been able to answer was that his life there wasn’t what he _didn’t_ want.

For how many years now had Ben forgotten how it felt to truly desire something? To have something in his life that filled the days with more than just their passing?

He’d been running away for so long. Always knowing what he wanted to escape from, but never where he wanted to arrive. He’d forgotten what it felt like to put himself in motion with his eyes ahead. To feel the gravity of choosing something for himself. 

Perhaps that was why the time with Rey had seemed so formidable. Perhaps that was why he’d been afraid.

He was done with that now.

He remembered all too well the many times he had sworn he would never return to the city. He remembered his bitterness and his anger. He remembered the longing to escape into quiet and the gentle ease of New England, where no one’s crushing expectations weighed on him. 

And yet, switching the turn signals on and following the signs for New York City, he found that was all they were: Remembrances. He’d been living the last years of his life on nothing but memories. He had considered it a victory that he’d escaped from the torrents of his past and the fractious pressures of his family, but never filled the empty spaces they left within him. 

Maybe he’d never even been aware of the empty spaces. Until he looked in Rey’s eyes and saw everything good that still existed in the world he had shut out. Everything that he had forgotten.

As each passing hour brought him closer, Ben felt none of the dread or apprehension he might have expected. There was only the building heat in his chest, as something deep within him came alive and rejoiced to feel his tie to Rey glowing brighter, pulling him to edge above the speed limit and painting maps of unknown streets in his mind. He’d never spent much time in Brooklyn, and yet he could clearly picture her front door and house number as if he called it home himself.

He trusted their mind-link would bring him to her door, just as it had carried her voice to him when she was ready for him to hear. 

Beyond that, Ben was purely petrified. Beyond that, whatever Alpha-Omega bond had formed between them had done all it could, and the rest would fall squarely upon his own shoulders. 

It had been simple to let the passions of his Alpha blood guide him in how to please her. Her pleasure had been his own, so instinct had moved him in how to satisfy her. But now, this was an entirely different and more terrifying playing field. Nothing was mapped out, nor was anything certain. Perhaps she hadn’t really meant to call him to her. Perhaps she’d already changed her mind. As he crossed the state border into New York, Ben could only hope that the right words would come to him when he saw her. 

_I want to be whatever you want of me. I want to give you whatever you need. I’ve never felt the way I did with you, and I can’t forget what it was like to finally have purpose._

 

It was a Saturday morning with nothing planned, so Rey had no idea why she felt so anxious. She’d dreamt of Ben again. Instead of revisiting their shared time in Vermont, she’d dreamed him here, in her kitchen. He’d been chopping vegetables at the counter as if he belonged there. In her dream, Rey had said nothing. Just put on a pot of water to boil and kissed his cheek as she passed. Why would such an innocuous, impossible dream put her so on edge?

Perhaps exactly that – Because it was impossible. As she made herself toast, she found she could picture it all so clearly: Ben laying out silverware, Ben rifling through the fridge, Ben smiling that smile that crinkled his cheeks before he came over to kiss her. 

Unaccountably, Rey found her heart pounding. Why were silly daydreams having this effect on her? Minute by minute, why did it seem that he grew clearer and clearer in her mind? Why did everything _ache_ so much today at his absence? 

Rey had been content in her memories of him; Glad and thankful for the incredible heat they’d shared. With Ben, she’d learned of a powerful, breathtaking side of her Omega being she’d never known existed. With its knowledge, the strength to return to her life had come easily. Everything, every single moment with Ben had been so _good_ – Letting him tease her over breakfast, just as much as the feeling of him fitting so perfectly within her.

Rey’s desire to keep the memories pristine had cut her off from wondering whether they had missed further possibility, or why he hadn’t said goodbye. It was unthinkable that he did not care for her. Sure, Rey knew it had been his Alpha hormones that had been responsible for most of what they’d shared, but hormones alone couldn’t be so very different from Alpha to Alpha. It was something else that had made every moment with Ben a joyous fulfillment, compared with the humiliating misery of heats with her ex. It was something so much more difficult to explain. 

Something smaller – A softness in his eyes or a reverence in the way he touched her. And yet, it was something so much bigger and more important. Certainly, the Alpha part of Ben had paired perfectly with the Omega part of herself, but what of the rest of them as _people?_

Rey remembered the way she’d been addicted to her ex like a drug. He’d used his Alpha influence to draw out her Omega subservience to the point where Rey never had a chance to ask whether she actually wanted to be with him. She’d simply had to be. 

It was a relief for Rey to find none of the same twisted dependency within her for Ben. During her heat he had satisfied her more thoroughly than she’d ever known, yet ironically she had emerged from the heat brimming with confidence that she would never shortchange herself for the sake of an Alpha ever again. Ben had helped her see she was better than that; Better than blindly following her baser impulses to her own detriment. 

But there was nothing, _nothing_ base in her feelings for Ben. In Vermont, she had wanted him and smiled at the thought of him, before she even knew he was an Alpha. His name called up nothing but choice, tenderness, and enjoyment. None of the things she’d used to associate with Alphas. Now, she thought of him because she wanted to. Not because she hurt or because she felt inadequate without him, but because of the moments they’d shared when her heat abated and they’d simply been two people sharing and exploring the world within each other as neither of them had ever known it before.

This morning, a sigh and a smile weren’t enough for Rey to move on from thinking of Ben. The memory of his face seemed alive before her, tantalizingly within reach. She could feel their mind-link glowing within her, but resisted the urge to open and reel it towards her again. She had the suspicion she’d already done so last night, and prayed that her on-edge, raw feeling wasn’t because of something she’d done. 

Rey let her dream spill into reality as she steeped her tea, imagining how Ben might pause whatever he might have been cooking to come slip his arms around her, or duck down so he could reach a kiss to her neck. Suddenly, Rey swore she could _hear_ his soft voice and gentle laugh right there against her ear. Her heart jumped and twisted in more directions than she could count: Alarm that it all seemed _too real_ , as if she were really sensing him in proximity; Warm content just to remember what it felt like when he held her like that; And then – longing as she hadn’t felt for him since returning to New York. She’d done her utmost to accept that their time together had been limited to Vermont, but something in their mind-link had suddenly sparked her heart open for him again. 

_Do you still think of me too? Did you not say goodbye because you didn’t want to call it the end? Do you ever wonder if we could…?_

A sudden knock banged on the door. Rey jumped, spilling half of her tea across the counter. She stood frozen for a moment, breathing hard. She was pulled back in time, to when her heat had just begun, when she’d discovered the face in her mind she truly desired, and then the knock had come at her door. Ben’s knock back then had been softer and much more timid than the noise that had just filled her townhouse apartment, but surely it couldn’t be a coincidence that both times the noise had come when she was lost in thoughts of him…

Rey didn’t bother with her hair or her pajamas. She could think of nothing but the wild hope that maybe, somehow, Ben had come to her again… 

With her tea spilled over the counter and toast cooling, Rey ran for the door and flung it open.

She was greeted by the cold morning air, alongside an even colder, leering smirk. The opposite of all her hopes.

“Look at that, you’re finally back. You’ve been ignoring my messages.”

It took a moment for Rey to fully take in who was actually standing on her front porch. She hadn’t pictured his face in so long, and it was so painfully, unbearably different from the one she had hoped for.

Rey crossed her arms, cold in the wind and defiant to her ex’s assuming presence.

“What makes you think you have the right to show up here? I don’t want you calling me, I don’t want you anywhere near me.”

His eyebrows raised, a mockery of impressed surprise. “Is that so, babe? You jet off for a few weeks and then you want to just cut me out of your life?”

“I want you off my porch,” Rey ground out, her tone stony. 

“After two years, you want to end it like this?”

Rage boiling up from her toes and filling her so completely she forgot all trace of the cold air, Rey seethed, “After you cheated for who even knows how long? You’re fucking right I want this over.”

“Babe, it was just the Alpha in me. I barely even knew her, I just sensed she was an Omega in heat and then I couldn’t say no.”

“Stop calling me ‘babe.’ I don’t care how it happened. And don’t play the hero. You hated being there for my heats, and you could barely even perform.”

Rey watched in satisfaction as his eyes narrowed and a muscle in his jaw twitched. 

“Don’t get cocky like that, Rey. We both know how you used to beg for me.”

Rey clenched both fists to reign in the urge to throw a punch. Instead, she ground out between savagely gritted teeth, “Because you were a controlling prick, and I was a fool to let you stop me from finding someone better.”

His eyes flashed at that. “Someone better?” Rey watched his nostrils flare to scent her. Her skin crawled, hating the familiarity he had with the various layers of her Omega scents. His gaze turned hard as it fixed on her. “You had a heat with someone else, didn’t you? There’s still some foreign Alpha stink on you.”

Rey saw red, her fists shaking in anger now. How _dare_ he speak that way about an experience more profound than anything he could ever provide her? How dare he even speak of Ben at all…

“It’s none of your fucking business how I spend my heats. I can’t believe you have the nerve to show up here and _scent me_ after you’re the one who went fucking around!”

Rey’s voice rose beyond her control. An elderly couple walking their dog looked up as they passed the house and glared upwards. Abashed but not nearly finished with him yet, Rey roughly grabbed his arm to pull him only just enough inside so she could close the door and speak her peace. 

Rey spat her words, “The only reason I’m still talking to you is so I make myself clear. I want you out of my life. I don’t ever want to see or talk to you again. Stop calling me, stop showing up here…”

“Rey-…” he cut her off, the urgency in his tone briefly giving Rey pause. “It was a mistake. I’ve been regretting it ever since you left on your trip, and we never really had the chance to talk after it happened…”

“There’s nothing to say. Even if you hadn’t cheated, I still should have left you a long time ago.”

 _A long time ago._ Rey realized with a lurch how changed she was from the woman who had dated the man before her. How distant it all felt. She saw him so clearly now – In all his hideous, careless, selfish cruelty. He was still talking, still arguing ‘Please’ and ‘Babe’, but Rey might as well have been standing in a parallel dimension. Memories rushed up and blanketed her senses – The place and the voice and the sweet belonging that had turned her world right side up again. 

The caress of fingertips at her cheek. _“Please, Rey. Promise me.”_

Something shriveled in Rey’s chest, turning cold. It was _wrong_ , letting this Alpha so near her again. Suddenly, everything within her writhed in distaste at his presence. She had no idea how she’d let herself fall into his deception – How she’d let her Omega needs so dreadfully mislead her. But finally, her instincts rallied to her defense. She wasn’t meant for him and never had been. She had to get him the hell away from her for good…

Rey reached for the door to throw him out, when his hand landed hard on her wrist, gripping it tight. 

“It was this other Alpha, wasn’t it?” he growled, eyes piercing. “You spend one heat with some other prick and then start thinking you don’t need me?”

Rey glared up at him with all the force she could muster. “It was the biggest mistake of my life to ever need you. I won’t be making it again.”

He stepped closer to her as Rey held her ground. She roughly pulled her wrist from his grip and reached for the door again as she saw his eyes darken in fury. 

Then, a single knock sounded from outside. Only minutes removed from the previous knock, but this one worlds different. Even standing directly behind the door, the sound was still soft. Nevertheless, it was enough to freeze both Rey and her ex in place for a moment, interrupting the glares they’d been leveling at each other.

Rey’s hand completed its reach for the doorknob. Seizing the opening of opportunity, she turned the knob and opened the door for the second time that morning.

The door flew open, and there stood Ben. 

Dressed head to toe in denim, his hiking boot-clad feet turned slightly inward where he stood, his hair disheveled yet framing his face perfectly. Her heart pounding in slow, sweet disbelief, Rey took him in bit by bit. It seemed impossible, to see him here on her front porch, in the middle of Brooklyn. It should have been incongruous to see him here, and yet everything within Rey gave a deep, silent sigh at the immediate, bone-deep feeling of _rightness_ that settled through her to see him here, on her front porch. 

Finally, Rey looked into his face. His nervous, unsure expression, belying eyes that seized upon the sight of her with relieved certainty that took Rey’s breath away. But then, she saw the moment Ben’s gaze moved past her, and spotted the man hovering in the doorway behind her. Rey’s heart seized, as she watched whatever conviction had carried Ben to her door shatter and desert him. 

“I-I’m sorry,” Ben said in barely a whisper, looking at Rey with a terrible mixture of regret and hurt and shame before his gaze fell to the ground and Rey swore she felt her heart breaking apart. 

_This isn’t how it’s supposed to be…_

“I misunderstood, but… I’ll go now.”

_No, Ben please. I made you a promise to never give him another chance. I meant it, I swear._

And just like that, Ben was already beginning to turn away, to retreat back down the stairs and to the street…

“Ben, wait!”

Rey’s arm darted out to catch his sleeve before he could fully turn away. 

“Please. Wait.”

But before she could say anything, the man who’d been lurking behind her strode out from the doorway, his eyes narrowing when he realized the scent coming from this stranger matched the one he’d found lingering on Rey. 

“Ben?” he asked, lip curling around the name in distaste. “So you’re the Alpha who made my girl get high and mighty ideas, huh?”

While Rey hurled a disgusted curse, Ben needed only a second to fully comprehend exactly who and what he’d walked in on. When it all fell into place, relief warred with burning, spitting anger. The man’s display of arrogance was plenty enough, but all Rey had recounted to him about this man came welling up in Ben’s memory, until his hands trembled at his sides. 

He remembered holding Rey as she cried, after one of their rougher bouts had dislodged memories of this man. Ben noted with utter contempt that the man was noticeably shorter than him, so a well-aimed punch to the jaw should be more than enough to…

_It wasn’t you._

Rey’s words came back him in memory – Pleading and thankful all at once. She’d fallen asleep in his arms whispering and assuring it to herself. 

Ben was not this man. So even as Rey’s ex stepped closer, glaring with open challenge in his eyes, Ben stood still and ramrod straight. He kept his arms at his sides. He simply stood tall and immovable, lifting his chin to emphasize how he looked down to return the man’s glower. 

Ben said only, “I don’t think you have the right to call her that.”

The other man openly sneered. “The fuck do you know about what I can and can’t do with her? You’re just some nobody off the street and you better stay away from her-...”

“Don’t you dare try to dictate who I see,” Rey immediately shot off. “For the last time, we are over. You are nothing to me, and if you show up here again I swear I’ll file a restraining order.”

“Rey, you know I only meant…”

“Shut up and get the fuck off my porch already.”

Finally seeing that Rey was a lost cause and immovable, her ex turned his attention back to the man who’d presumed to steal her and then waltz up to her door. He found the taller man’s glare nearly as unforgiving as Rey’s. Inching closer, he hoped to provoke this Ben guy into some sort of attack, just to break Rey’s little fantasy of her Prince Charming. He drew himself to his fullest height, annoyed when Ben still stood taller than him, but glaring furiously enough to compensate.

The hatred in Ben’s eyes couldn’t have been clearer, but the rage within him remained contained. Ben wouldn’t budge.

That is, until Rey slid her hand into his and gave it a soft tug. “Come inside, Ben. Forget him.”

The ex’s eyes sparked maliciously at that. He was about to retort, when Ben finally did move. For a brief moment, he leaned down dangerously into the other man’s space, forcing the shorter man to back up a pace. The nasty retort died on his lips.

Then Ben turned slightly towards Rey, just enough to show that he’d heard and would follow. And in an instant, all the menace or threat of violence evaporated from him. He didn’t tower over Rey as one might expect given his height, but rather he relaxed and leaned into her just enough so his head appeared almost at level with hers. 

Rey guided Ben inside with her. 

“See you never,” were the final words she spoke to her ex before slamming the door.

 

Mere minutes ago, the hallway behind Rey’s front door had felt stiflingly small and filled with cold. Now, with Ben standing there with her, it became far too big. She could feel his warmth, but yearned to sink into it – To slide into his arms and the wide comfort of his chest…

But Rey looked into his face, and the myriad of emotions churning across his face made her think he was the one in need of comfort first.

Words ran away from Rey in a rush, all of her relieved and rejoicing and incredulous all at once in his presence.

“Ben, I swear I wasn’t going to let him stay. I wasn’t even listening to him, I just let him in for a second to try to make him understand that I’m never, ever giving him another chance. I made you a promise, Ben, and I meant it.”

Ben blinked twice, then three times. For a moment, it seemed he was simply trying to process the reality that Rey was really there – That this was truly real. He wasn’t dreaming or imagining her voice; She was really standing here before him, really looking at him and speaking to him with that ardent sparkle in her eyes.

“Rey,” Ben murmured, with a half-smile and a slow shake of his head. Her name on his tongue was the best thing he had tasted since the morning he left part of himself in her bed. “You owe me nothing.”

“I know. But I just wanted to be clear – It’s over with him. Forever.”

The unsavory subject resolutely closed, Rey and Ben were left focused on only each other; Grappling with all the questions and entreaties and wonder and yearning that enfolded them both together. 

“You drove all this way?” Rey whispered, as if she feared voicing the impossibility might make him disappear; Might dispel the dream.

“Yeah.” Ben looked down to his own feet for a moment. Rey watched him bite his bottom lip, debating how and how much to explain. “I heard your voice. Last night.”

He looked up at her again, and Rey’s heart chased itself in circles. She wanted to make herself a home in his gentle, wondrous eyes. 

“Rey. I’ve been dreaming of you almost every night since you left. But I thought… Last night was different. It was like you were really there – Like you’d sent yourself to me… And I realized I couldn’t go another day.

“Letting you leave was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I watched you sleep, that last morning of your heat, and it was like tearing myself in half, when I left that bed…” 

His eyes turned beseeching and raw, seeking truth for the question that had been tormenting him.

“Was it the right thing, Rey?”

Rey breathed in sharply, her throat trembling. The desperation in his voice tugged her mind to clarity – Shaking her from the daze of wanting nothing more than to close the few steps between them and slide into his arms.

Even more than the yearning that defied pure biology and elevated her to something greater, she wanted to reassure him. She wanted them to face together all that danced and overflowed in the air between them; before they gave into it and it became something beyond words.

Before it all ascended back to the transcendent purity they had shared during her heat.

Without hormones raging in her head, now there might be a chance for them both to understand. Yet while her head might have been clearer now, Rey recognized full well that all the expanse of feeling that had overflowed during her heat with Ben filled her still. 

The heat had brought them together, but created none of it. It had all been him. All her. 

“The day I left, while I was packing…,” Rey began carefully, having to look down at the floor rather than right into Ben’s pleading, avid eyes. “I can’t deny that I felt hurt. That day, I certainly would have been angry with you. I don’t know what I would have done or how I would have felt, if I saw you again before I left.”

Rey slowly looked up. She found Ben watching her with clear restraint in his features. He was hanging on her every word – Each carrying either his deliverance or sentence. And yet, he visibly fought to hide his desperate suspense. He didn’t want Rey to see how much his heart hung in the balance between her words; Didn’t want to push her towards anything but the truth of her own feelings.

“But since I got back here to my life,” Rey resumed, finding the sight of him not distracting, but soothing in her exploration of all she was feeling. “…That tiny bit of hurt seemed to shrink away. Remembering all that happened… it seemed impossible that you meant to hurt me.”

Ben’s mouth jerked open and Rey could practically _see_ the avowal of _‘Never’_ on his lips. But he reclaimed control of himself just in time, sealing his lips again and letting Rey continue, uninterrupted. 

“I’ve been dreaming of you too, you know.” Rey admitted, looking up with a shy smile at the admission, then feeling her heart keen when she saw how Ben’s expression went warm. “I’d wake up smiling, even though you weren’t here. All that you gave me during the time we shared… I was fulfilled. My heart’s been full ever since, and even being away from you took none of it away. With a little time, I realized someone who made me feel like that must care for me. He must care enough to give me the time to understand my own feelings and what I want for myself.” 

Rey lifted a shoulder, hunching slightly as she gestured vaguely towards the door, eyes averted.

“Sometimes I haven’t had that space, to make decisions for myself. Sometimes stupid hormones and heats have taken choices away from me, and I’ve let selfish people impose themselves in my life. These past weeks were the first in a long time when I could really think clearly; When there was no weight on my shoulders, no shadows in the corners of my life.”

Rey squeezed her bottom lip between her teeth as she looked to Ben’s face again. His expression was strained wide open, watching her as hope and ardor warred with restraint in his eyes. Rey took a step towards him, the tangible warmth of him coaxing her to form the proper words.

Every inch nearer to him brought her more certainty. 

“It felt right, Ben. Dreaming of you. Dreaming of you here, in my life.”

Rey watched Ben breathe out a slow, shuddering breath. His body visibly relaxed, betraying the power each word from her lips held over him. The import of her own words sinking in as she recalled the wonder of his being here right now, Rey hurriedly backpedaled a step.

“I mean - Of course, that doesn’t have to mean _here_ , in New York. I know you said you hated it here. And I don’t know if you’re even looking for anything more than what we already…”

Rey was abruptly silenced by the brush of Ben’s fingers along her cheek. Speech trickled away as he cupped her face. Even without her heat, his touch sparked warmth along her skin that soothed everything else away.

“Rey,” Ben whispered, his voice faint with overwhelming tenderness, yet laced with amusement. “I drove all night to find you. With no bag, nothing in the back of my truck, only a plan that ended here at your door.”

Her heart banging insistently in her chest to just _give in_ already – enough with this _talk_ – Rey leaned in automatically to his touch, his gentle voice, his warmth that welcomed her like home…

Ben sucked in a sharp breath. The noise made Rey open her eyes again, blinking when she saw Ben still standing rigid before her, his eyes still trembling as he took her in, and a struggle still written across his face. 

Frowning as she sensed some ache lingering unresolved within him, Rey reached up to thread her fingers between his. She kissed their entwined fingers, comforting and encouraging, before folding their hands together against her chest. 

Ben opened his mouth slightly, but it took a few more seconds for him to get the words out. 

“I don’t know what I can offer you, Rey.”

His turn to speak visibly tormented him. He didn’t want to say things that might make her turn away – Anything that might make her let go of his hand and stop looking at him with such care, when all he wanted was to hold her as close as he could and never surface again.

But the drive had given him time to think. While he knew without a shred of doubt what he wanted, there were also whole sides of his life he’d ignored for far too long. Decisions he’d refused to face. Rey had to hear it all, if she were really to remain free of the burdens and cowardice of others. 

“What do you mean?” she asked hesitantly, seeing from his face that in his mind, this was all a much bigger matter than their obvious attraction. That seemed to be the clear part, amid a storm of uncertainty. 

“I’ve been running from decisions – from life for a long time. Instead of just sliding through the days, I almost forgot what it felt like to _want_ something.” 

Ben’s fingers squeezed Rey’s tighter, the column of his throat swallowing with visible effort. He looked into Rey’s eyes, to remind himself he was brave enough for this. 

“You asked me if my life in Vermont was what I wanted. The truth is – I don’t think I ever really asked that of myself. I hated the life I grew up with, resented almost everyone around me, and I let escape become confused with purpose.

“I know it wouldn’t be fair for me to say I want _you_ to be my life. A relationship should be built equally by people who can stand on their own, and I would never want you to feel overburdened. But the way you’ve awakened something in me, Rey, something I forgot was there… I think I’m learning how to build on my own again.”

Rey’s eyes were glimmering pools now as she looked up at him, and Ben couldn’t stop himself from lifting his free hand to her waist. His fingers brushed down the small of her back before resting along her hip, and even that small, innocent touch filled him: The force of gravity and the bright, capable might of sunshine. 

Ben made himself go on, to face the final truths. 

“It’s unconscionable, really, that I haven’t seen my parents in years. That I’ve let so much time pass without trying to fix anything. I should have thought about moving forward and actually _living_ my life.”

Looking into Rey’s eyes, Ben could see a question forming there as she followed his threads of introspection, retracing the internal paths she had opened within him.

“But coming back to New York…”

Ben quickly understood, and pre-empted her concern.

“Although I think I would follow you anywhere, please don’t think I’m considering New York only because of you. It wouldn’t be right to lay that on you alone. The truth is I should have come back ages ago. I can never truly move on, can never really be my own man – until I rewrite my life here to something more than just resentment and disillusion.”

Ben’s thumb moved gently across Rey’s hip, fingertips caressing through the fabric of her shirt. His breath fell short, when he looked in her eyes and saw how they danced.

“You made me feel _awake_ for the first time in years, Rey. You made me rediscover courage I forgot I had. Yes, I would move back to New York for you, but you’ve also helped me remember how much more I can be. And _that_ – that’s why I want to be here.”

Rey’s eyes looked a little wet, and with his speech over, Ben lapsed back into timidity.

“So I suppose… that’s all I have to offer. Even though you deserve someone who’s at least got a few things figured out…”

Now it was Ben’s turn to have his speech abruptly halted. With the same instantaneous effect of his earlier touch to her face, Rey’s fingertips brushed his lips and Ben fell entirely still. 

“Ben,” she whispered, and the trembling potency in that single syllable rendered him weak like a moonless night, even while his hands quivered to present her with the stars. 

“No one’s ever talked about me like you do. Never looked at me like you,” Rey whispered, leaning a little closer as her fingers traced the shape of his lips, eyes quavering like rippled water. “I’ve been someone’s afterthought for too long. It didn’t seem possible that I could be someone so… vital. But with you, when we were together… I felt cherished, powerful like I never have. 

“And I know it wasn’t just my heat, because even now – even _now_ …” Rey’s breath shook unsteadily and Ben tensed, hanging from the edge of her words, unsure if it was laughter or tears welling over her. “I could cut the world in half, with what you make me feel.”

Rey grinned, her face flushing with joyous certainty and lips rosy with her smile. “That’s what you give me, Ben. I want you here to share this with. And if you feel at least some of what I do, then you’ll have strength to spare for all else.”

She was right. Of course she was. While Ben had not doubted his decision nor lost his conviction for even a moment on the drive to her, he had constantly doubted himself. He had feared the moment they’d just passed through; When he would have to stand before her with no Alpha instincts guiding him, as nothing more than a man very nearly in love. 

She’d inspired the bravery in him. The way she looked at him with such trust and belief in her eyes. In Vermont, she’d entrusted her body to him when her need was greatest. Afterwards, Ben couldn’t deny part of the reason he had left had been his own doubt that he was worthy of her trust in anything else, after his Alpha side went dormant. 

But now, reaching up to cup her face between his hands as she smiled with every happiness shining in her eyes, Ben realized with a shock that he’d given his Alpha side too much credit. 

Rey had been the reason for everything – Since the first time he saw her on the hiking trail and carried her home. And _he_ had done the rest, his instincts only guiding attraction and care rooted straight in his heart – Biology rendered superfluous. 

“I feel all of it,” Ben breathed, bending with his lips so close to Rey’s, he was utterly parched for the taste of her. “I know what I want. I know it now, Rey. You make it all easy. I would fight for you, as long as you want me, and I could win anything.”

Rey gasped his name and surged up to him. She threw her arms around his neck as if he were the last port in a storm, and kissed him as fiercely as she’d wanted to since the moment she saw him at her door. As deeply as she’d dreamt, every day they’d been apart. Ben drew her as tightly to him as he could, his hands bunching in the fabric of her shirt as his mouth opened wide and eager to her. 

In sacred murmurs between desperate kisses, Rey avowed, “I want you always. I would _choose you,_ always.”

Ben’s lips shaped her name against her mouth. Composure finally slipping from him fully, Ben drew her up more tightly against him. With a delicious sound of need against his tongue, Rey gripped his shoulders as he pressed her back against the counter. 

“Tell me where to take you,” Ben panted between hungry, roving kisses up her jaw, before his thirst for her lips drew him back. Rey groaned, her legs already lifted around Ben’s hips as she curled herself closer to him.

“Back in the hallway, bedroom’s on the right.” 

Too many instructions. Too much distance. Too many clothes. 

Ben had to shake himself and remember the warm, stunning pleasure of Rey bare and writhing against him – Remember that’s what awaited him if he could only stop kissing her long enough to carry her there. He held her thighs locked tight around him as he found the way.

Then he was spilling her down on the bed. Her hands pulled him down to her, immediately pushing at his clothes. His fingers raced to the warmest, softest places of her. It was war with every zipper and button, while Rey’s sweet, devouring lips claimed his attention. 

It felt different, without the roar of Rey’s heat and Ben’s matching hunger raging around them. This time, Ben could hear each tiny, sacred sound Rey made as he eased into her. He could feel her thighs trembling, opened wide on either side of him. He could kiss the blush spreading down her neck and across her breasts, as she moaned and rocked herself into him more deeply.

He needed no Alpha might for this. Even while the warm, wet heat of her eviscerated his senses; while the way she kept whispering his name over and over again made him weak and yet resolute for her, nothing in his whole life had ever been so unmistakable. Ben kissed her lips, speechless that there existed such purpose and clarity in the world for him still, even after so much lost time. 

For Rey’s part, she couldn’t say Ben made her feel whole. It was more than that. The reverence he kissed into her skin and the devotion he pleasured her with were more than the fulfillment of biology. His hands tracing her body and his name upon her lips were purposeful, joyous choices; The immensity of her own potential set free. 

Tangling her fingers in his hair and gathering him close as his essence filled her entirely, Rey felt a difference in the way he moved. During her heat, he’d always been sure and driven - Pushed by instinct and need that matched her own. Now, even while he still made molten pleasure erupt in her deepest inner sanctums, Rey felt the way he trembled slightly in her arms. He moaned her name as if he were pleading, and when his pace sped to make Rey cry out and come apart utterly, he hid his face in her neck and unraveled with her; Stripped to the soul and finally believing that perhaps, Alpha or no, he could be enough.

Rey’s scent shifted subtly – As they caught their breath and inhaled the reality of each other, their bodies still one. Ben found himself drawn to a spot below Rey’s left ear, where her skin had blossomed bright red and the sweetest, headiest scent he’d ever known called to him. When he kissed the spot, Rey whimpered loudly as her fingers scrambled into his hair, petting and holding him there as he licked up every bit. 

It had never shown itself to him during Rey’s heat – Had never shown itself to anyone before.

Her mating gland.

Although Ben’s heart seized around the wonder of its reveal, he retained enough sense to know it was far too soon. 

“Oh. Rey…,” he whispered in a hush against the flushed, raised skin that seemed made for his teeth. Instead, it was more than enough for now simply to press his lips to that sensitive spot again and again – Each kiss a wordless promise that he would show himself worthy of it.

“Ben,” Rey whispered, breathless at the staggering feeling of his lips there. She shivered beneath his tender kisses until it became too much. At that point, she rolled into his chest to claim his kisses with her lips. 

Once their pulses had calmed and Rey laid curled against Ben’s chest, his arms wound around her, Rey asked with a tease in her voice, “You really didn’t even bring a bag?”

Ben breathed out a laugh. “No bag. Nothing.”

Rey propped herself up to see his face. He gazed up at her, lifting a hand to trace the shape of her face. The face he’d seen in his dreams and followed all night.

“I didn’t think that far. Idiot that I am.” He traced the dimple in her cheek. “You make me my best and also my most foolish.”

Rey rested her chin upon his chest, beaming to herself. Her eyes twinkled as she looked up at him. “Lucky for us, I like you both ways.” 

“Is it too early to say that I think I like you in every way?” Ben asked, voice musing and wondrous.

Rey colored slightly – not in embarrassment or uncertainty, but in awe. 

“I don’t think so. Not when I want to tell you to stay – To stay right here with me.”

Rey leaned down to kiss Ben’s lips, long and purposeful. Afterwards, she murmured to him, “Don’t get your bag. Don’t drive back. Sleep in this bed with me. Cook in my kitchen. Let me share everything with you, until your life is full and you miss nothing anymore.”

Ben’s mouth moved soundlessly for a long moment. He gazed up at her not in doubt, but in concern that she might regret moving so quickly. 

Then his lips sealed closed again. He took in the diamond shimmer in Rey’s eyes, beyond all questioning. She was, of course, in every way the same woman who’d so enraptured him in Vermont. But there was also something new to her since he’d last seen her. Where there had once been unease and the shadow of insecurity, there now shone only radiance. 

Though he knew he still had plenty to unravel within himself, she was beyond anything in his power to doubt. 

Ben rose up to kiss her, closing her tightly in his arms. He kissed each corner of her lips before he pulled back, basking in the affection in her eyes that firmly reminded him of everything possible. Of all he could be.

“I’m not driving back for a single thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, this was my first attempt at anything A/B/O, so any thoughts/comments would be much appreciated. :) Thank you so much for reading!  
> If you feel so inclined, come on over to my tumblr where I often stress/flail over my writing projects: http://xoruffitup.tumblr.com  
> (Links aren't being my friend today...)


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